(1951-)
Who Is Jill Biden?
Jill Biden is the present First Lady of the United States; she is married to Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States. Jill Biden spent most of her childhood in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Having always enjoyed English classes in high school, Biden eventually earned two master's degrees and a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware. Throughout her career, Biden has taught at community colleges and later developed related college programs with backing from the White House. Before becoming first lady in 2020, Biden was America's second lady during President Obama’s terms and helped raise awareness about supporting military families, education, and women's issues.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Jill Tracy Biden
BORN: June 3, 1951
BIRTHPLACE: Hammonton, New Jersey
SPOUSES: Bill Stevenson (1970-1975) and Joe Biden (1977-present)
CHILDREN: Beau, Hunter, and Ashley
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini
Early Life
Biden was born Jill Tracy Jacobs on June 3, 1951, in Hammonton, New Jersey. However, she spent most of her childhood in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with her parents and four younger sisters.
Though she set out to study fashion merchandising at a junior college in Pennsylvania, Biden soon found her studies unsatisfying and left school. Around the same time, she married Bill Stevenson, a boy she had begun dating in the summer of 1969 — the same year she had graduated from high school. The two decided to attend the University of Delaware together, and Biden majored in English. By their junior year, the couple had drifted apart and divorced in 1975. Biden then took a year off from school, knowing she would return and finish.
Marriage, Family, and Career
In the spring of 1975, Biden was set up on a blind date with then-U.S. Senator Joe Biden by his brother. In 1977, the Bidens were married. Biden helped her husband raise his two sons from a previous marriage, and they had a daughter of their own, Ashley, in 1981. Within two years, Biden was "itching" for more, according to an article in Vogue magazine, and decided to return to school.
While working in a psychiatric hospital — where she taught English to adolescents with emotional disabilities for five years — Biden earned two master's degrees from Villanova University and West Chester University. She taught for three years at Claymont High School and then at Delaware Technical and Community College. Biden also earned her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware in January 2007.
Professor and U.S. Second Lady
Biden has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College since 2009, the same year her husband was sworn in as vice president of the United States after Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win. In 2010, she hosted the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges with President Obama. She also continued to work on related outreach for the administration, as later seen with the 2012 Community College to Career bus tour, and was a co-founder of the Book Buddies program. Her first book, Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops (2012), based on her granddaughter's story of a military family's experience in the wake of her stepson Beau’s deployment, was published in 2012.
The Biden family faced tragedy when Beau passed away from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. In response, Joe Biden launched the Cancer Moonshot to increase funding and accelerate research in the search for new treatments and cures, with Jill Biden playing a prominent role in the program’s outreach efforts. The couple would later create the Biden Cancer Initiative to continue their work.
Around this time, there was also the question of whether Joe Biden would run for U.S. president. He ultimately decided not to run, with the Democratic party nomination going to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Donald Trump defeated in the general election.
2020 Presidential Campaign
In 2019, Joe Biden announced he was running for president in the 2020 election. Jill Biden took an active part in the campaign and, for the first time, took a leave of absence from her college teaching job to stump for her husband across the country. In 2019, she released her second book, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself, an autobiography, followed by her second children’s book, Joey: The Story of Joe Biden (2020), depicting her husband’s youth and his adversity in overcoming challenges due to his childhood stammer.
Biden also reportedly played a crucial role in her husband’s selection of California Senator Kamala Harris as vice president. Joe Biden was elected president after a contentious campaign and election that saw President Donald Trump falsely claim victory.
First Lady and Advocate for Military Families and Women's Rights
Following her husband’s election, Biden returned to her job at Northern Valley Community College, making her the first First Lady to hold a job outside the White House during her husband’s presidency. When asked how she balanced the demands of a career and her role as first lady, she told Real Simple, “You can't do anything in a haphazard way. You have to have purpose while you're doing it, and it has to be organized. That's the key to it.”
Biden played a vital role in the Biden administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, traveling the country to encourage vaccination and supporting efforts to safely reopen schools. She also worked closely on the relaunch of the Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative. She stumped for the president’s efforts to pass legislation making community college tuition free for most students.
Biden has long been involved in her work supporting military families, inspired partly by her stepson Beau’s military service. As Second Lady, she became involved with the nonprofit organization Delaware Boots on the Ground, which helps families during military deployment. Biden and then-First Lady Michelle Obama also launched Joining Forces. This initiative has provided educational and employment resources and health/wellness services to military personnel and their families, and as First Lady, Biden has relaunched the initiative’s programs, visiting more than two dozen military installations and securing federal government commitments in support of military families.
Biden has also traveled extensively abroad, as both Second Lady and First Lady, to support women's and children's rights and increased educational opportunities. In 2021, she co-wrote an op-ed with Catherine, Princess of Wales (then the Duchess of Cambridge) on the importance of primary education. The following year, she traveled to Europe to meet with Ukrainian refugee women and children who’d been forced to flee following Russia’s invasion, including a clandestine trip across the border to Ukraine to meet First Lady Olena Zelenska.
In 2022, Joe Biden announced he was running for re-election in the 2024 presidential election.
"Breakfast Tacos" Comment
While Joe Biden is known for verbal flubs and considers himself a “gaffe machine,” Jill Biden has rarely followed suit. One exception occurred in July 2022 at the annual conference of UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights group. In her remarks, she praised “the diversity of this community — as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio — is your strength.” The speech drew sharp criticism from some Latino politicians and activists, who considered it a stereotype that did not reflect the breadth and wide diversity of Latino cultures and considered it an example of political pandering to an influential voting bloc. Biden quickly apologized for the remark.
Quotes
- When we were elected, I said to Joe, ‘You know, I have to continue teaching,’ and he said, ‘Of course.'
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CITATION INFORMATION
- Article Title: Jill Biden Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/history-culture/jill-biden
- Access Date:
- Publisher: A&E Television Networks
- Last Updated: August 24, 2021
- Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
QUOTES
- When we were elected I said to Joe, ‘You know, I have to continue teaching,’ and he said, ‘Of course.'
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