NEW YORK: Nancy Reagan still sees her deceased husband, president Ronald Reagan, when she is alone at night, she said in a newly published magazine interview.

"It sounds strange, but I see Ronnie," Reagan, who turns 88 next month, told Vanity Fair in a rare interview.

"At nighttime, if I wake up, I think Ronnie?s there, and I start to talk to him. It?s not important what I say. But the fact is, I do think he?s there. And I see him."

The Reagans' deep love for each other was famous and five years after the president's death, aged 93, Nancy Reagan says: "I miss Ronnie a lot, an awful lot."

"People say it gets better. No, it does not," she added.

Commenting on President Barack Obama's White House, the former first lady said she had voted for his Republican challenger John McCain, but was "very impressed" by his campaign.

Reagan has long been interested in astrology, something that has made her the target of jokes. She told Vanity Fair of her shock on hearing Obama quip last November that he was only going to take advice from living ex-presidents and not "get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances."

But she suggested the harm had been repaired.

"I thought, There?s at least going to be a note written. Sure enough, that afternoon (Obama) called," her son Ron Reagan told the magazine.

Since then she has been invited to dinner with the Obamas and spent 45 minutes on the telephone with the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

Her advice to her successor? To have lots of state dinners. The Reagans hosted 56, while George W. Bush and his wife Laura had only six.

"It?s the easiest thing in the world. You don?t have to do anything. Just have a good time and do a little business. And that?s the way Washington works."