TAMPA, FL -- If the knock against Mitt Romney is that he's too rich and rigid, then his wife is perhaps the Republican's best weapon to change peoples' minds.

Ann Romney was expected to take the stage here at the Republican National Convention Tuesday and paint a picture of a Mitt Romney not many people know, a kind and loving husband and father who can be counted on when the going gets rough.

Excerpts from her speech were leaked prior to her prime time speech, and highlight her efforts to humanize the Republican presidential candidate.

"Tonight I want to talk to you from my heart about our hearts. I want to talk not about what divides us, but what holds us together as an American family. I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours. Tonight I want to talk to you about love."

Ann and Mitt have been together since high school, and she has been a prominent fixture on the campaign trail.

The daughter of a Welsh immigrant, Ann baked and then doled out Welsh cakes -- a sugary soft biscuit -- to reporters who flew with her from Massachusetts to Florida Tuesday.

On the plane, she joked with reporters that Tuesday night's speech would be one of the first on the campaign when she's read from a prepared text.

"This is a unique experience for me, to actually have something written because no one's ever written a speech for me," she said. "I've never given (a speech) off a sheet."

In 1998, Ann was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and in 2008 was diagnosed with a form of breast cancer and has credited her husband with being a rock throughout the ordeals.

"I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a 'storybook marriage.' Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long and rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or breast cancer," the advance copy of her speech reportedly reads. "A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.

"At every turn in his life, this man I met at a high school dance, has helped lift up others."

The couple also suffered a miscarriage in 1991, which Ann has only recently talked about openly in media interviews.

Romney himself will take the convention stage Thursday night to formally accept the party's nomination for presidential candidate.

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