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- JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice president, is a former senator from Ohio.
- Vance met his wife, Usha Vance, while they were both students at Yale Law School.
- They wed in both Christian and Hindu ceremonies in 2014 and have three children.
When Fox News asked Usha Vance in June 2024 how she felt about her husband, JD Vance, being considered as Donald Trump’s running mate, she told host Lawrence Jones that she was “not raring to change anything about our lives right now.”
But it appeared she came around — she was seen alongside JD Vance and Trump at the Republican National Convention as her husband was officially nominated to join the ticket and again at the Trump campaign’s victory party in November.
JD Vance, the former junior senator from Ohio and bestselling author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” and Usha Vance, a litigator whose résumé includes a Supreme Court clerkship, met as students at Yale Law School and wed in 2014.
Since becoming vice president and second lady, the Vances have taken several international trips together, including an upcoming visit to the US military’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on Friday.
Here’s a look inside the relationship of the newest GOP power couple who serve as vice president and second lady.
Born in Ohio and raised by his grandparents in Kentucky, JD Vance joined the Marines and graduated from Ohio State University.
JD Vance served as a public affairs marine in Iraq, liaising between service members and members of the press. After his military service, he majored in political science and philosophy at Ohio State University.
Usha Vance studied history at Yale and taught American history in Guangzhou as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow.
Usha Vance grew up in a suburb of San Diego. Her parents are Indian immigrants.
Usha Vance told Fox News in June that her parents’ Hindu faith was “one of the things that made them such good parents, that make them very good people.”
She was a registered Democrat until 2014.
The couple met while they were students at Yale Law School.
In law school, Usha Vance served as executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, according to a bio on the website of her former employer, Munger, Tolles & Olson, that has since been removed.
She also worked pro bono with the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.
Usha Vance told NBC News in 2017 that she and JD Vance took all of their classes together and were friends before they started dating. When they were assigned to work on a brief together, Usha Vance said she was impressed by his diligence.
“I’ve never seen anybody so starstruck,” their law school professor, Amy Chua, said of JD Vance in an interview with NBC News. “It was love at first sight.”
They wed in 2014 and held both Christian and Hindu ceremonies.
Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, The American Conservative reported. Usha Vance was raised Hindu.
When asked about their interfaith marriage in a June interview with Fox News, Usha Vance said: “There are a lot of things that we just agree on, I think, especially when it comes to family life, how to raise our kids. So I think the answer really is that we just talk a lot.”
In 2016, JD Vance published his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which he wrote about his relationship with Usha Vance.
JD Vance’s memoir details his working-class upbringing and the lives of poor, white Americans. He also wrote about how Chua, his professor, encouraged him to focus on his relationship with Usha Vance as a Yale law student.
When JD Vance asked Chua to recommend him for a federal clerkship, she warned him that it’s “the type of thing that destroys relationships.”
“Amy’s advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married,” Vance wrote.
“Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at this unfamiliar institution — it was okay to chart my own path and okay to put a girl above some shortsighted ambition,” he continued. “My professor gave me permission to be me.”
After law school, JD Vance worked at VC firms while Usha Vance landed prestigious clerkships.
Vance worked at Mithril Capital, a VC firm backed by Peter Thiel, in 2016. One former coworker previously told Business Insider that Vance was often away from the job promoting his book, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Thiel ended up being instrumental in Vance’s rise to power in politics, donating $15 million to his Senate campaign and encouraging Trump to choose Vance as his running mate, The New York Times reported.
Vance went on to work at Revolution, a VC firm in Washington, DC, before founding his own firm, Narya Capital, in 2019.
Meanwhile, Usha Vance worked as a litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson before leaving to clerk for Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the US Court of Appeals and Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Following her clerkships, she returned to Munger, Tolles & Olson, according to a bio on the firm’s website that has since been removed.
They have three children.
Their first child, Ewan, was born a month before Usha Vance began her clerkship with Chief Justice Roberts, NBC News reported. They also have another son, Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.
Usha Vance appeared in a political ad and at campaign events when JD Vance ran for Congress in 2022.
In the ad, Usha Vance described her husband as “an incredible father” and “my best friend.”
In an interview with Newsmax about the ad, Usha Vance also responded to media reports about Vance’s dramatic transformation from a “Never Trumper” to a staunch Trump supporter.
“Sometimes people say that he’s changed a lot, but the truth is I’ve known him now for so many years and he’s always been so true to himself,” she said.
As Trump vetted JD Vance for the vice presidency, Usha Vance expressed ambivalence about the possibility of him being chosen.
“I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now, but I really believe in JD and I love him, so we’ll see what happens with our lives,” she told Fox News in June 2024.
When Trump chose JD Vance as his 2024 running mate in July, Usha Vance quit her job as a litigator.
On the first day of the Republican National Convention, when Trump announced JD Vance as his vice presidential pick, a spokesperson for Munger, Tolles & Olsen told ABC News that Usha Vance had left the firm.
“Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career,” the spokesperson said.
Usha Vance spoke at the Republican National Convention about meeting and falling in love with JD Vance.
Usha Vance said that when they first met, JD Vance approached their differences “with curiosity and enthusiasm.”
“Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food from my mother, Indian food,” Usha Vance said in her speech. “Before I knew it, he’d become an integral part of my family, a person I could not imagine living without.”
JD Vance acknowledged racist attacks against his wife from white supremacists.
After white nationalist Nick Fuentes questioned JD Vance’s ability to “support white identity” with an Indian wife, he voiced support for his spouse.
“Look, I love my wife so much. I love her because she’s who she is,” JD Vance said in an interview with Megyn Kelly in July. “Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just, I love Usha.”
He also hit back against the attacks on ABC News’ “This Week,” telling host Jonathan Karl in August, “Look, my attitude to these people attacking my wife is, she’s beautiful, she’s smart. What kind of man marries Usha? A very smart man and a very lucky man, importantly.”
He continued, “Don’t attack my wife. She’s out of your league.”
JD Vance thanked his “beautiful wife” in a post on X after he and Trump won the election in November.
Usha Vance appeared alongside her husband and members of the Trump family at the campaign’s election night event in Palm Beach, Florida.
“THANK YOU!” Vance wrote on X after the election results came in. “To my beautiful wife for making it possible to do this. To President Donald J. Trump, for giving me such an opportunity to serve our country at this level. And to the American people, for their trust. I will never stop fighting for ALL of you.”
At the 2025 inauguration, Usha Vance held the Bible as JD Vance was sworn in as vice president.
JD Vance was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Usha Vance’s former boss when she clerked for him in the US Court of Appeals.
They took their first foreign trip together as vice president and second lady in February, visiting France and Germany.
The vice president attended the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris and the Munich Security Conference. He and Usha Vance also visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
They brought their three children along on Air Force Two.
In March, JD Vance will join Usha Vance to visit Pituffik Space Base, the sole US military base in Greenland.
Since winning a second non-consecutive term in the White House, Trump has doubled down on his intention to acquire Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory where the US has a military base. The governments of Greenland and Denmark have maintained that it is not for sale, but Trump has said he would not rule out using force.
In March, the White House announced that Usha Vance would embark on a solo trip to Greenland to “visit historical sites, learn about Greenlandic heritage, and attend the Avannaata Qimussersua, Greenland’s national dogsled race” in March. The government of Greenland said that they had not invited any delegations to visit, and Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede called the trip “very aggressive.” Trump said that Greenland had asked the US to visit.
Usha Vance’s trip was subsequently scaled back to visiting Pituffik Space Base, the US military’s northernmost installation in Greenland. In a video, JD Vance announced he would travel with her.
“There was so much excitement around Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself, and so I’m going to join her,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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