4 things to know about Usha Chilukuri Vance, wife of Trump's VP pick
3. J.D. Vance and Usha Chilukuri met at Yale Law School
During her time at Yale Law School, Usha met J.D. Vance, the future Republican senator of Ohio and now-running mate to GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump. In November 2022, The New York Times reported that J.D. and Usha were in the same classes during their first year of law school. In 2013, the pair were some of the organizers behind a discussion group on the subject of “social decline in white America.”
“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide,” Vance wrote about his wife in Hillbilly Elegy. “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed.”
In a 2020 interview with conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly, Vance described himself as the kind of man who “really benefits from having sort of a powerful female voice over his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that, do that.’” The Republican lawmaker told Kelly that the powerful female voice in his life used to be his grandmother, but now it's Usha.
Usha and Vance were married in Kentucky in 2014, and they also held a separate ceremony where they were blessed by a Hindu pandit (priest), according to the Times. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, while Usha is Hindu. The couple have three children together.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman