Jill Biden

Jill Tracy Biden (née Jacobs, formerly Stevenson; born June 3, 1951) is an American educator who is the current first lady of the United States. She was also previously the second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

"Jill Jacobs" redirects here. For the Jewish activist, see Jill Jacobs (rabbi).

Jill Biden
Biden in 2021
First Lady of the United States
Assumed role
January 20, 2021
PresidentJoe Biden
Preceded byMelania Trump
Second Lady of the United States
In role
January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017
Vice PresidentJoe Biden
Preceded byLynne Cheney
Succeeded byKaren Pence
Personal details
Born
Jill Tracy Jacobs

(1951-06-03) June 3, 1951
Hammonton, New Jersey, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse(s)
Bill Stevenson
​
​
(m. 1970; div. 1975)​

​
(m. 1977)​
Children
RelativesFamily of Joe Biden
ResidenceWhite House
EducationUniversity of Delaware (BA, EdD)
West Chester University (MEd)
Villanova University (MA)
Signature
Academic background
ThesisStudent Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs (2006)
Doctoral advisorBarbara Curry
Academic work
InstitutionsDelaware Technical Community College
Northern Virginia Community College

Born in Hammonton, New Jersey, she grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. She married Joe Biden in 1977, becoming stepmother to Beau and Hunter, his two sons from his first marriage. Biden and her husband also have a daughter together, Ashley, born in 1981. She has a bachelor's degree and a doctoral degree from the University of Delaware, as well as master's degrees from West Chester University and Villanova University. She taught English and reading in high schools for 13 years and instructed adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital.

From 1993 to 2008, Biden was an English and writing instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College. Since 2009, she has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College and is thought to be the first wife of a vice president to hold a paying job during her husband's tenure. She is the founder of the Biden Breast Health Initiative non-profit organization, co-founder of the Book Buddies program, co-founder of the Biden Foundation, is active in Delaware Boots on the Ground, and is co-founder of Joining Forces with Michelle Obama.

Early life

Jill Tracy Jacobs was born on June 3, 1951,[lower-alpha 1] in Hammonton, New Jersey.[1] As a child, she lived in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, before moving to Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, a northern suburb of Philadelphia.[2] She is the eldest of five sisters.[2]

Her father, Donald Carl Jacobs (1927–1999),[3] was a bank teller and U.S. Navy signalman during World War II who then used the G.I. Bill to attend business school and became head of a savings and loan institution in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia.[2][4] His family name had originally been Giacoppo or Giacoppa before her Sicilian grandfather changed it.[lower-alpha 2] Her mother, Bonny Jean (Godfrey) Jacobs (1930–2008),[9] was a homemaker,[3] and was of English and Scottish descent.[10]

Her parents labeled themselves as "agnostic realists" and did not attend church, but she often attended Sunday services at a Presbyterian church with her grandmother.[11] Later, Jacobs independently took membership classes at nearby Abington Presbyterian Church and at age 16, was confirmed.[4][12]

Jacobs always intended to have a career.[13] She began working at age 15, which included waitressing in Ocean City, New Jersey.[2][4][13] She attended Upper Moreland High School, where by her own later description, she was somewhat rebellious and enjoyed her social life and being a prankster.[14][2] However, she has recalled that she always had a love of English class,[14] and her classmates have said she was a good student.[2] She graduated in 1969.[15]

Education and career, marriages and family
Further information: Family of Joe Biden

Jacobs enrolled in Brandywine Junior College in Pennsylvania for one semester.[16] She intended to study fashion merchandising but found it unsatisfying.[4] She married Bill Stevenson, a former college football player, in February 1970;[17] she became known as Jill Stevenson.[18][19] Within a couple of years, he opened the Stone Balloon in Newark, Delaware, near the University of Delaware.[17] It became one of the most successful college bars in the nation.[20][lower-alpha 3]

She switched her enrollment to the University of Delaware,[16] in its College of Arts and Sciences,[21] where she declared English as her major.[4] She then took a year off from college and did some modeling work for a local agency in Wilmington.[4] She and Stevenson drifted apart;[17] they separated during 1974.[22]

She met Senator Joe Biden in March 1975.[13][16] They met on a blind date set up by Joe's brother Frank,[16] who had known her in college,[23] though Biden had seen her photograph in a local advertisement.[13][lower-alpha 4] Although he was nearly nine years her senior, she was impressed by his more formal appearance and manners compared to the college men she had known, and after their first date, she told her mother, "Mom, I finally met a gentleman."[4] Meanwhile, she was going through turbulent divorce proceedings with Stevenson; the court case ended with her not getting the half-share in the Stone Balloon she had wanted.[17] A civil divorce was granted in May 1975.[18]

Joe and Jill, soon after meeting in the 1970s

She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts[24] in English,[16] from the University of Delaware in 1975.[lower-alpha 5] She began her career being employed as a substitute teacher in the Wilmington school system, then taught high school English full-time for a year at St. Mark's High School in Wilmington.[16][13] Around this time she spent five months working in Biden's Senate office;[26] this included weekly trips with the senator's mobile outreach operation to the southern portions of the state.[16]

She and Joe Biden were married by a Catholic priest on June 17, 1977, at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York City.[1][13][27] This was four and a half years after his first wife and infant daughter died in a motor vehicle accident;[1] Joe had proposed several times before she accepted, as she was wary of entering the public spotlight, anxious to remain focused on her own career, and initially hesitant to take on the commitment of raising his two young sons who had survived the accident.[4][28] They spent their honeymoon at Lake Balaton in the Hungarian People's Republic, behind the Iron Curtain;[29][30] the destination was chosen upon the recommendation of Hungarian-born Biden staffer Tom Lantos.[31] She raised Beau and Hunter, and they called her Mom, but she did not legally adopt them.[19]

She continued to teach and worked on a master's degree at West Chester State College, taking one course per semester.[16] This was completed when, while pregnant, she received a Master of Education with a specialty in reading from West Chester in 1981.[4][24][32] The Bidens' daughter Ashley Blazer was born on June 8, 1981,[33] and Jill stopped working for two years while raising the three children.[34]

Jill and Joe Biden meeting Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in April 1980

She then returned to work, teaching English, acting as a reading specialist, and teaching history to emotionally disabled students.[13] She taught in the adolescent program at the Rockford Center psychiatric hospital for five years in the 1980s.[1][4] In 1987, Biden received her second graduate degree, this one a Master of Arts in English from Villanova University.[1][24] During her husband's unsuccessful bid for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, she said she would continue her job of teaching emotionally disabled children even if she became the first lady.[35] She taught for three years at Claymont High School.[4] In the early 1990s, she taught English at Brandywine High School in Wilmington;[36] several of her students there later recalled her as genuinely caring about them.[37] In all, she spent thirteen years teaching in public high school.[13]

From 1993 through 2008, Biden was an instructor at the Stanton/Wilmington campus of Delaware Technical & Community College,[24][38][39] where she taught English composition and remedial writing, with an emphasis on instilling confidence in students.[38][40] She has said of teaching at a community college, "I feel like I can make a greater difference in their lives. I just love that population. It just feels really comfortable to me. I love the women who are coming back to school and getting their degrees, because they're so focused."[38]

Biden is president of the Biden Breast Health Initiative, a nonprofit organization begun in 1993 that provides educational breast health awareness programs free of charge to schools and other groups in the state of Delaware.[41][42][43] In the following 15 years, the organization informed more than 7,000 high school girls about proper breast health.[43] In 2007, Biden helped found Book Buddies, which provides books for low-income children,[43] and has been very active in Delaware Boots on the Ground, an organization that supports military families.[40] She runs five miles, five times a week, and she has run in the Marine Corps Marathon as well as the Philadelphia Half Marathon.[13][2]

Biden later returned to school for her doctoral degree, studying under her birth name, Jill Jacobs.[34] In January 2007, at age 55, she received a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in educational leadership from the University of Delaware under the direction of professor Barbara Curry.[1][43][44][45] Her dissertation, Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs, was published under the name Jill Jacobs-Biden.[44]

Biden has regularly attended Mass with her husband at St. Joseph's on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware.[46] (Whether she has ever formally converted to Catholicism or explicitly identifies as a Catholic has not been made public.[lower-alpha 6])

Role in 2008 presidential campaign
Biden at the August 2008 announcement of her husband becoming Barack Obama's running mate

Despite personally opposing the Iraq War, Biden had not wanted her husband to run in the 2004 presidential election, to the point where she interrupted one strategy meeting discussing the possibility by entering in a swimsuit with the word "NO" inscribed on her stomach.[28] But following George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, she urged her husband to run again for president,[39] later saying: "I literally wore black for a week. I just could not believe that he won, because I felt that things were already so bad. I was so against the Iraq War. And I said to Joe, 'You've got to change this, you have to change this.'"[38] During Joe Biden's unsuccessful campaign to be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, she continued to teach during the week and would join him for campaigning on weekends.[39] She said she would have taken an activist role in addressing education as her chief focus of concern as a potential first lady.[49] She also stated that she would not seek inclusion in Cabinet meetings and that "I say that I'm apolitical if that's at all possible being married to Joe for 30 years."[39]

Once her husband was selected as the running mate to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, she began campaigning again. She wore a Blue Star Mothers Club pin in recognition of Beau Biden's deployment to Iraq.[38] She was not a polished political speaker but was able to establish a connection with the audience.[38] She also made some joint appearances with Michelle Obama.[50] Throughout the time her husband was running for vice president, Jill Biden continued to teach four days a week at Delaware Technical & Community College during the fall 2008 semester and then campaigned over the long weekend while grading class papers on the campaign bus.[9][38][51]

Second Lady of the United States

First term
Jill and Joe Biden dancing at the President Obama Home States Ball, January 20, 2009; the gown was by Reem Acra
Official portrait, March 2009

Following the election of the Obama–Biden ticket, she and her husband moved into Number One Observatory Circle, the official vice presidential residence in Washington.[52] But as the new Second Lady of the United States, Biden intended to keep teaching at a Washington-area community college, and several of them recruited her.[53][52][54] In January 2009, she began teaching two English courses as an adjunct professor at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), the second largest community college in the nation.[45][55] It has been rare for second ladies to work while their spouses serve as vice president,[50][52] and Biden is believed to have been the first second lady to hold a paying job while her husband was vice president.[45][28] In White House announcements and by her preference, she was referred to as "Dr. Jill Biden".[45][56]

Catherine Russell, a former adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was named Biden's chief of staff for her role as second lady.[57] Courtney O’Donnell, a former spokesperson for Howard Dean and Elizabeth Edwards, was named her communications director[58] and Kirsten White, a lawyer at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, her policy director.[59] As second lady, Biden had a staff of eight overall and occupied a corner suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.[56]

In May 2009, Obama announced that Biden would be in charge of an initiative to raise awareness about the value of community colleges.[60] Biden continued teaching two English reading and writing classes at NOVA in fall 2009.[61] In January 2010, she gave the commencement speech at the University of Delaware's winter commencement, the first such address by her at a major university.[62] In August 2010, Biden appeared as herself in an episode of Lifetime's Army Wives, making it part of her campaign to raise awareness of military families.[63]

In April 2011, she and Michelle Obama founded a national initiative, Joining Forces, to showcase the needs of U.S. military families.[64][65][66] In September 2011, Biden lent her support to USAID's FWD campaign, a push for awareness surrounding the deadly famine, war, and drought affecting over 13 million people in the Horn of Africa.[67]

She continued to teach at NOVA,[68] and by 2011 held a permanent position as an associate professor, teaching three English and writing composition courses two days per week.[69] She made her position there as normal as she could, sharing a cubicle with another teacher, holding regular office hours for students, and trying to persuade her accompanying Secret Service agents to dress as unobtrusively as possible.[69] Her students were often unaware of exactly who she was, referring to her simply as "Dr. B."[70] She told a colleague, "My standard line when students ask me if I am married to the VP is to say that I am one of his relatives. That usually quiets them."[28] Staffers recall Biden always carrying students' work around with her on trips, and Michelle Obama's recollection of her time travelling with Biden was simply, "Jill is always grading papers."[19]

An examination by The New York Times of her e-mails while second lady concluded that, "she shared the perks of the White House with her teaching colleagues, arranging for tickets to White House events like a garden visit and a holiday tour. But she didn't appear to pull rank; when she needed to take time off work – to attend an event with the Obamas or go on an overseas trip with her husband – she requested permission from the college."[28] In February 2012, she staged a "Community College to Career" bus tour with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis that aimed to showcase alliances between community colleges and local and regional businesses.[71]

Her life with her husband at Number One Observatory Circle tended towards the informal and was centered around family and their nearby grandchildren.[69] In June 2012, she published a children's book, Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops, based around her stepson Beau's deployment.[72] The same month, the Bidens' daughter Ashley, a social worker and former staffer at the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families, married Howard Krein.[73]

Role in 2012 presidential campaign

In the 2012 U.S. presidential election, in which her husband was running for re-election as vice president, Biden played a modest role.[72] She did not cut back on her teaching schedule and made few solo campaign appearances.[72] This reflected her continuing distaste for both politics and public speaking, even though the Obama campaign considered her valuable in connecting to military families, teachers, and women.[72]

Second term
Official portrait for second term, December 2012
Biden with Juliana Awada, the First Lady of Argentina during her visit to Buenos Aires, June 2016.

Following the re-election of Obama and her husband on November 6, 2012, Biden began a second term as second lady. She wore a silk blue gown by Vera Wang when she appeared at the inaugural balls in January 2013.[74]

During her second term, Biden continued to be involved with supporting military personnel, including staging multiple visits to the Center for the Intrepid rehabilitation facility for amputees and attending the inaugural Invictus Games in London.[75] During the 2014 U.S. midterm Congressional elections, she campaigned for a number of Democrats, including some ones in high-profile contests such as Mark Udall in Colorado and Michelle Nunn in Georgia.[76][77]

In May 2015, her stepson Beau Biden died from brain cancer. She later described the loss as "totally shattering. My life changed in an instant. All during his illness, I truly believed that he was going to live, up until the moment that he closed his eyes, and I just never gave up hope."[70] She has said that she lost her faith following his death and stopped praying and attending church for four years, but later started to find faith again as a result of campaign trail interactions with people in 2019.[19][47]

She was present at her husband's side in the Rose Garden on October 21, 2015, when he announced he would not run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 2016 election.[78] By her own account, Biden was disappointed by his decision, believing her husband was highly qualified for the position, and "would have been the best president."[79]

Biden continued to teach at NOVA, handling a full load of five classes during the Fall 2015 semester.[80] During 2016, she was present with her husband on a listening tour for Cancer Moonshot 2020, an effort he was leading.[81] In March 2016, she headed the official party that welcomed American astronaut Scott Kelly back to Earth from his almost full year in space.[82]

Subsequent activities

The former second couple launched the Biden Foundation in February 2017, with the purpose of allowing them to pursue the causes they cared most about, including focuses upon preventing violence against women, his moonshot initiative, and her interests in community colleges and military families.[83][26] That same month, she was named board chair of Save the Children; she said, "I think [their] emphasis on education fits with my life's work."[84] Her husband was seen as a popular ex-vice president, and she received a standing ovation when she was a presenter at the 71st Tony Awards.[26]

In June 2017, the couple bought a $2.7 million, off-the-water vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, near Cape Henlopen State Park, where they planned to host members of their extended family.[85][86] Their ability to purchase this family property was due in part to deals they signed with Flatiron Books upon leaving office, with Biden contracted to write one book and her husband two.[26][86] By 2019, the couple reported some $15 million in income since leaving the vice presidency, including $700,000 in speaking engagements for herself.[87] The couple also substantially increased their charitable giving during this period.[87]

The Bidens at a dinner for the Human Rights Campaign in 2018

Jill Biden continued to teach full-time at NOVA after her husband left office,[84] with a salary of close to $100,000.[86] She was selected to give the keynote address at a commencement for Milwaukee Area Technical College in May 2017.[88] She gave the keynote address at a California teachers summit in July 2017, emphasizing the importance of communities supporting their teachers given the emotional and circumstantial stresses they often have to function under.[89] Then in May 2018, she gave a commencement address at Bishop State Community College in Alabama, telling the graduates that "Maybe like me, life got in the way and it's taken you a lot longer than you expected to get here today. ... Whoever you are, know this, if you can walk across this stage, you can do anything."[90] In February 2019, she spoke to the graduating class of the Newport News Apprentice School, telling them that she realized many of them were in complicated life situations with multiple responsibilities, and that "Sometimes your day is a jigsaw puzzle that never seems to get completed.... But no matter where life takes you, as of today you are a master of a craft, a shipbuilder and a leader, and no one can take that away from you."[91]

In May 2019, her memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself was published.[92] The book has little political content, instead focusing on aspects of family.[93] In it she states that while she is "grateful" to have been second lady, "The role I have always felt most at home in is being 'Dr. B.'"[70] USA Today called it an "often-poignant memoir that charts her journey from a rebellious teen to young divorcee to the second lady of the United States."[92] Biden did some book signings to help promote the work.[93]

Role in 2020 presidential campaign
Biden at an August 2019 campaign event

Regarding the much-discussed possibility of her husband running in the 2020 United States presidential election, Biden was a key participant in his decision-making process.[94] By one report in March 2019, she was "enthusiastically" in favor of his running.[95]

The Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign was officially announced on April 25, 2019.[96] A Town and Country magazine headline declared that "Jill Biden Might Just Be Joe Biden's Greatest Political Asset".[96]

Days later, Biden addressed the matter of women who had accused her husband of physical contact that had made them feel uncomfortable by saying, "I think what you don't realize is how many people approach Joe. Men and women, looking for comfort or empathy. But going forward, I think he's gonna have to judge – be a better judge – of when people approach him, how he's going to react. That he maybe shouldn't approach them."[97] She said she had experienced male intrusion on personal space herself in the past and that "I just sorta stepped aside. I didn't address it. ... things have changed. There was a time when women were afraid to speak out. I can remember specifically it was in a job interview ... if that same thing happened today, I'd turn around and say, 'What do you think you're doin'?' ... it's totally different."[97] She also attracted attention by saying that "It's time to move on" concerning her husband's role in 1991 regarding Anita Hill and the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.[98]

Biden continued to teach at NOVA during 2019, at one point telling a reporter, "I'm here grading research papers in between interviews."[70] She staged appearances without her husband in early contest states such as Iowa, in some cases accompanied by a granddaughter.[99] She attracted notice during one campaign stop in New Hampshire when she emphasized the electability argument in favor of her husband, saying, "you know, your candidate might be better on, I don't know, health care, than Joe is, but you've got to look at who's going to win this election, and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, 'OK, I personally like so-and-so better,' but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump."[100]

Once Hunter Biden became a Republican political focus during the scandal related to the Ukraine that led to presidential impeachment, she was outspoken: "Hunter did nothing wrong. And that's the bottom line."[28] The strain of the subsequent impeachment trial was enough to fracture a friendship she had with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who repeatedly called for Hunter Biden to be questioned as a witness at the trial.[101]

Biden played a more active role in this presidential campaign than she had in her husband's two prior ones,[19] and for the first time, Biden reluctantly took a leave of absence from NOVA for the spring 2020 semester so that she could be on the campaign trail full-time.[28] She took training in online teaching once the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States struck.[19] She indicated that she intended to resume teaching at NOVA even if her husband were to be elected.[19]

The Bidens in Des Moines on the eve of the February 2020 Iowa caucuses

In the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, she sometimes staged more campaign appearances in that state than her husband did.[28] She gave out her campaign e-mail address to voters in case they wanted to ask her follow-up questions.[102] In joint appearances, she sometimes spoke after he did, acting in the "closer" role.[102] After experiencing a number of victories around the nation, she gained some media attention at the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries during her husband's speech when she physically blocked a protester from getting at him.[103] Asked about the stiff-arm she employed, she said, "I'm a good Philly girl."[2]

With her husband having become the presumptive Democratic nominee, in June 2020, she published the children's book Joey: The Story of Joe Biden, which portrayed him as having been "brave and adventurous" as a child despite having a stutter that he was bullied for.[104] In July 2020, she spoke out about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, appearing in a video with her husband to emphasize that she understood the frustrations that children, parents, and teachers were having with virtual education substitutes but saying that "Schools and parents alike want a clear, science-based strategy, not mixed messages and ultimatums."[105] She criticized U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for what she saw as political motivations in advocating a reopening of schools no matter what and said that "the first thing [Joe Biden]'s going to do is pick a secretary of education, who is a public school educator and has experience in the classroom. I mean I hear that, again and again and again – no more Betsy DeVos."[106]

She was heavily involved in the vice-presidential selection process that resulted in Senator Kamala D. Harris being chosen.[19] On the second night of the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, Biden spoke from the classroom at Brandywine High School, where she had once taught English.[36] She drew parallels between family suffering and the plight of the country, saying, "How do you make a broken family whole? The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding and with small acts of kindness, with bravery, with unwavering faith."[107] During the final stretch of the general election, she campaigned in the Delaware Valley region of Pennsylvania, near her home town, emphasizing the importance of the swing state and of women voting, saying, "You will decide, you, the women, will decide the future of this state and this state may determine the entire election."[108]

First Lady of the United States
Biden alongside her husband as he takes the presidential oath of office at the 2021 Inauguration of Joe Biden

Biden's husband was elected president and took office on January 20, 2021.[109] She is the first spouse since Barbara Bush to hold the positions of both Second Lady and First Lady and is the first spouse since Pat Nixon to hold them non-consecutively. At age 69, Biden is the oldest first lady to assume the role.[110] She is also the first Italian American first lady.[111][8] She has reiterated that she plans to continue teaching, which would make her the first wife of a sitting U.S. president to hold a paying job outside the White House.[112] In mid-November 2020, it was announced that her chief of staff as first lady would be attorney and diplomat Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon and that her senior advisor in the role would be campaign staffer Anthony Bernal.[113] In December 2020, an op-ed piece by writer Joseph Epstein in The Wall Street Journal, which urged the incoming First Lady to drop the "Dr." from her preferred form of address because she is not a medical doctor,[114] was met with a widespread backlash especially among professional women.[115] Exiting First Lady Melania Trump did not invite incoming First Lady Jill Biden to the White House for tea and a tour, which previously had been a tradition in the presidential transition of power.[116]

Writings
  • Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs (University of Delaware, 2006) [Ed.D. dissertation]
  • Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops (Simon & Schuster, 2012) [children's, illustrations by Raúl Colón]
  • Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself (Flatiron Books, 2019)
  • Joey: The Story of Joe Biden (Simon & Schuster, 2020) [children's, illustrations by Amy June Bates]

Honors and awards
Main article: List of honors and awards received by Jill Biden

Biden has received a half dozen honorary degrees as well as a few other awards.

Notes
  1. See "RT @whitehouse Happy birthday, @DrBiden! – Take note @Wikipedia!". The White House/Twitter. June 3, 2013. The date of June 5 given in this 2009 Washington Post piece previously used in this article is incorrect.
  2. Some Italian sources give Giacoppo,[5][6] while some American sources give Giacoppa.[4][7][8]
  3. In addition to local bands, musical artists who performed at the Stone Balloon during this period included 1974, pre-Born to Run fame Bruce Springsteen[17] as well as Chubby Checker and Tiny Tim. More bigger-name acts performed at the Stone Balloon after Stevenson's marriage with Jill ended.
  4. In August 2020, Stevenson stated to media outlets that this oft-told story about how Joe and Jill met was made up: that he and Jill had known Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia going back to 1972, that he had asked County Councilman Biden for help with a liquor license and had held a fund-raiser for his 1972 Senate campaign, and that Joe and Jill had begun an affair in 1974 before he and Jill had separated. In response to Stevenson's statement, a spokesman for Jill Biden said in September 2020: "These claims are fictitious, seemingly to sell and promote a book. The relationship of Joe and Jill Biden is well documented. Jill Biden separated from her first husband irreconcilably in the fall of 1974 and moved out of their marital home. Joe and Jill Biden had their first date in March of 1975, and they married in June of 1977."[23]
  5. Sources sometimes report Jill Biden's college graduation as occurring in 1974;[16] news articles and press releases from the university indicate that 1975 is correct.[21][25]
  6. Some sources characterize the couple as being Catholics.[47] However Jill Biden generally talks about her adult faith in a personal sense, and while her 2019 memoir Where the Light Enters describes her in Catholic settings with her husband or their children, it does not state that she herself is a Catholic.[48]

References
  1. Farrell, Joelle (August 27, 2008). "Colleagues see a caring, giving Jill Biden". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on September 1, 2008. Retrieved August 28, 2008.
  2. Terruso, Julia (October 14, 2020). "Jill Biden's Philly 'grit'". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on November 5, 2020. Retrieved November 7, 2020.
  3. Sama, Dominic (June 9, 1999). "Donald C. Jacobs, 72; Ran Savings And Loan In Phila". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2014.
  4. Van Meter, Jonathan (November 2008). "All the Vice-President's Women". Vogue. Archived from the original on August 31, 2014. Retrieved August 31, 2014.
  5. Bitti, Paolo Ricci (November 7, 2020). "Jill Biden, dalla Sicilia alla Casa Bianca: chi è la 'Philly girl' moglie del nuovo presidente". Il Messaggero (in Italian). Archived from the original on November 7, 2020. Retrieved November 8, 2020.
  6. "Birth record of Gaetano Giacoppo". Antenati Italiani (in Italian). Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved November 8, 2020.
  7. Argetsinger, Amy; Roberts, Roxanne (June 1, 2009). "Obamas' Chow: Politically Palatable". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved June 1, 2009.
  8. "Jill Biden Set to Become the First Italian American First Lady". Italian Sons and Daughters of America. November 7, 2020. Archived from the original on November 13, 2020. Retrieved November 9, 2020.
  9. Nathans, Aaron (October 6, 2008). "Joe Biden's mother-in-law dies at 78". The News Journal. Archived from the original (fee required) on February 23, 2014. Retrieved February 4, 2009.
  10. Stated by Jill Biden at 2020 Democratic National Convention, August 18.
  11. Biden, Where the Light Enters, pp. 191–192.
  12. Biden, Where the Light Enters, p. 192.
  13. Seelye, Katharine Q. (August 24, 2008). "Jill Biden Heads Toward Life in the Spotlight". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 10, 2008. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  14. Tasker, Annie (November 7, 2008). "Jill Biden getting attention". Bucks County Courier Times. Archived from the original on January 20, 2009. Retrieved November 7, 2008.
  15. Cosentino, Dom (August 28, 2008). "Upper Moreland grad Jill Biden in campaign limelight". Bucks County Courier Times. Archived from the original on September 1, 2008. Retrieved August 28, 2008.
  16. Cartwright, Al (July 17, 1977). "Son told Joe to marry Jill". Wilmington News-Journal. p. 3. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved March 8, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. Markovetz, Jessie (November 21, 2006). "Behind the Stone Balloon: Part 1". The Review. University of Delaware. Archived from the original on February 13, 2010. Retrieved July 28, 2010.
  18. "On the record: New Castle County: Civil". Wilmington News-Journal. May 13, 1975. p. 39. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved March 7, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. Yuan, Jada; Linskey, Annie (August 17, 2020). "Jill Biden is finally ready to be first lady. Can she help her husband beat Trump?". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on August 19, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
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Honorary titles
Preceded by
Lynne Cheney		 Second Lady of the United States
2009–2017		 Succeeded by
Karen Pence
Preceded by
Melania Trump		 First Lady of the United States
2021–present		 Incumbent

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