Nancy Sharon Kissinger (born Maginnes; born April 13, 1934) is an American philanthropist, and the wife of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The couple married on March 30, 1974, in Arlington, Virginia.^[1] The couple is noted for her being unusually tall and him being short.^[2]

Kissinger was born in Manhattan and raised in White Plains, New York. Her parents were Agnes (born McKinley) and Albert Bristol Maginnes, a wealthy lawyer.^[3] She received a B.A. in history in 1955 from Mount Holyoke College.

She was a long-time aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller before her marriage, recommended to him in 1964 by her future husband, then a professor at Harvard, where she was a student. Her first job was as Professor Kissinger's researcher on a Rockefeller task force; she continued working for Rockefeller at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund after the task force finished its work.^[4] She later became director of international studies for Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices for Americans.^[5]