--- title: Jimmy Carter's Secret to Living to 99, According to Grandson description: As Jimmy Carter turns 99 on Oct. 1, his grandson shares what he believes is the secret to his grandfather’s long life. canonical: https://time.com/6318343/jimmy-carter-birthday-99-grandson/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-09-29T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:52.513Z article:section: Politics og:title: Jimmy Carter's Secret to Living to 99, According to His Grandson og:description: As Jimmy Carter turns 99 on Oct. 1, his grandson shares what he believes is the secret to his grandfather’s long life. og:url: https://time.com/6318343/jimmy-carter-birthday-99-grandson/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88fdd7efaa673811/698a40ca86f68e41486f2cca/GettyImages-615304146.jpg?branch=production&width=817&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 817 og:image:height: 460 og:image:alt: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Running og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Jimmy Carter's Secret to Living to 99, According to His Grandson twitter:description: As Jimmy Carter turns 99 on Oct. 1, his grandson shares what he believes is the secret to his grandfather’s long life. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88fdd7efaa673811/698a40ca86f68e41486f2cca/GettyImages-615304146.jpg?branch=production&width=817&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Jimmy Carter's Secret to Living to 99, According to His Grandson > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=78a0c0ab-c901-477c-9d48-735bc12ba13b&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet the People Orienteering to Improve Their Mind-Body Health [Watch (HLS stream): Meet the People Orienteering to Improve Their Mind-Body Health](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5hrQlp7s.m3u8) (3:51)  _Published 2023-05-09. Generations ago, we used our brains to hunt, gather and find our way home. Today, GPS has eroded many of those skills, but science says using the navigational part of your brain is actually pretty important, and good for you. Enter orienteering, the sport of finding your way while getting a workout._  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Sep 29, 2023 12:00 PM UTC  Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter, First Lady and President of the United States, go for a jog. Washington, D. C., March 16, 1979. Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter, First Lady and President of the United States, go for a jog. Washington, D. C., March 16, 1979. © CORBIS/Corbis—Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Sep 29, 2023 12:00 PM UTC As Jimmy Carter, America’s longest-living president, turns 99 on Oct. 1, his grandson shares what he believes is the secret to his grandfather’s long life: [exercise](https://time.com/5533388/best-time-to-exercise/). “If he got to a new city that he had never been to before, whether there was Secret Service or not, he would say, ‘Hey, is there a bike?’” Jason Carter, a lawyer and former Georgia state senator, told TIME in a video chat on Sept. 28\. He says his grandfather would always make time to [jog](https://time.com/4738255/running-increased-lifespan-study/) around places he visited, and when he couldn’t [jog](https://time.com/4893161/hiit-high-intensity-interval-training-exercise/) anymore as he got older, he switched to riding a bike. Jimmy Carter also used to play tennis every day. "Stay active," Jason says. Jason jokes that the one sport that the 39th U.S. President and Nobel Peace Prize winner didn’t excel at was fishing, recalling a time when they were fishing for grouper and his grandfather couldn’t catch any fish. He made his grandson switch sides with him on the boat to see if that would change his luck. But while Jason Carter attributes his grandfather's longevity to an active lifestyle, he believes Jimmy Carter might have a different answer. Jason thinks that his grandfather would say that the secret to his long life is his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter. In 2015, the former President said, "The best thing I ever did was marry Rosalynn. That's the pinnacle of my life." ### More From TIME The two answers are perhaps related. Rosalynn was Jimmy's main jogging partner. TIME [described](https://time.com/vault/issue/1979-04-23/page/91/) how the couple would make time to pound the pavement during his presidency in the April 23, 1979, issue of the magazine: --- > “The presidential couple, in jogging attire, set out together on a course around the White House South Lawn (measured one memorable afternoon at a quarter-mile by panting correspondents who trailed Lyndon Johnson for 18 laps on an improbable mobile press conference). The Johnson quarter-mile is not the only Carter family run. They couple-jogged in Cairo and Jerusalem on recent visits abroad. Last week at Camp David, Rosalynn reached a running high. Trailed by two carloads of agents togged out in double-barreled shotguns, the First Lady panted a full 4 1/2 miles. "This is the farthest Rosalynn has ever gone," announced her proud husband, adding, "On good days, I like to go ten."” --- The former Commander in Chief is much more physically limited after a serious fall in 2019\. He’s been in hospice care since February, but will take time to celebrate his birthday in a small family event at his home in Plains, Georgia, according to Jason. (The date of some birthday-related festivities at his library in Atlanta, Georgia, got moved up from Oct. 1 because of a looming [government shutdown](https://time.com/6316879/how-government-shutdown-affects-americans/).) Reflecting on his grandfather’s [legacy](https://time.com/6206334/joe-biden-jimmy-carter-comparisons/), Jasoncalls it a “millennial presidency,” given all of the issues his grandfather tackled that are top of mind for the millennial generation. He says: “If we had listened to his presidency when they started [talking about climate change](https://time.com/5739622/women-girls-climate-action/), when they started talking about changing the way that we consume energy, solar and alternative sources—we would be far far ahead of where we are now. In those ways—on [the environment](https://time.com/5894179/jimmy-carter-climate-change/), social justice, human rights—the presidency itself was way ahead of its time.” ## Transcript Orienteering in a nutshell is the sport of navigating with a map and Compass through unfamiliar Terrain. It's very relaxing with the same time, you have the challenge of reading a map in solving a puzzle and navigating the way from one control to the next control. You basically interpret the map and use what information you can just to find the quickest route, the shortest route is not always the quickest route. It's still a very small unknown sport. It's a much bigger sport in Europe, but most people try the sport. They'll find it is really fun thing to do. Generations ago, we used our brains to hunt gather and find her way home today. GPS has eroded many of those skills. But science says, using the navigational part of your brain is actually pretty important and good-for-you enter orienteering the sport of finding your way while getting a workout on a recent spring day. We met up with a group of orienteers ranging from beginners to experts to learn more about this increasingly popular Pastime is definitely not something that I'm used to doing. You like the different courses or advance and for it beginner to beginner course. It may seem short but it's designed to basically lead you around. So it's basically all on trails and then you step up beyond that to intermediate courses and you basically off-trail a little bit more looking for maybe a single Boulder out in the woods. But you're utilizing features around you to navigate to those features. And then there's usually a range of advanced courses where it's designed to be a technical challenge. Having a perfect Rod. It's a gold a stretch for. But most of us usually make some mistakes on almost to our course and see what we've been doing this for years. The challenge is to figure it out and minimize your mistakes and hopefully beat everybody else back to the Finish. A new study from Canada suggested orienteering could help fight or prevent age-related cognitive decline in spatial navigation and memory. The sports mind, body workout wasn't lost on the folks. We spoke with, on the path. You are thinking one of these and in orienteering, you like, have another dimension. Okay. This is the beauty salon throughout on. We are on trails and not come in a wooded areas so it kind of like on and off running. I wasn't it wasn't quite ready for but it was good, lower. Once when we were trying to look for number seven, we just took the wrong path. That ended up going back to number 6. Before it was an orange here I would go running. I was always counting the minutes or seconds and when I'm only trying it's just pure fun, you know, I'm playing, I'm not trying to hit some targeted number of miles or minutes just to get the exercise. Everyone children adults should do orienteering because they always work with a body and we never mind. 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