Jill Biden the current U.S First Lady formerly known as Jill Jacobs was born in 1951 in New Jersey and grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her four sisters and parents. Her father was a successful banker who reached the president position and her mother was a homemaker.
Jill was in the middle of porcing her ex-husband Bill Stevenson when she met Joe Biden who was a widower after losing both his daughter and wife in a tragic car crash in 1972. The couple quickly grew closer and got married in 1977 when Jill stepped up and helped Joe with his two young sons Beau and Hunter. The Biden family sooner expanded with the birth of Jill and Joe’s daughter Ashley in 1981.
Jill has been the rock that held Joe together through two failed presidential runs, eight years as the U.S Vice President, and the death of his son Beau with cancer in 2015.
“She put us back together” Joe said during the Democratic National Convention back in August describing Jill’s impact on helping the family after losing Beau. He also added “She is so damn tough and loyal.”
Jill who was the U.S second lady for 8 years was one Joe’s most important and effective surrogates in his third race for the White House. She campaigned furiously for her husband. Crisscrossing the early voting states like Lowa and New Hampshire and the battlegrounds states like Florida and Michigan in the home stretch and headlining small events. She often presented her husband as the best candidate not only for moderate Democrats but also for the Independents and Republicans who are disappointed in Trump.
In a convention speech at Wilmington high school (where she taught English in the 1990s), Jill announced that her husband is planning on making the American nation whole with his love, understanding, compassion, bravery and faith.
Now that Jill is officially America’s First Lady there is some talk that she might modernize the role to fit the 21st century by keeping her full-time job as a professor even though she is expected to not work and only focus on the role and works of the First Lady.
Despite the fact that it will be extremely challenging for Jill to balance her full-time job and the incredible work of the First Lady, it will be a historical changing point in the role’s expectations and limits.