Usha Vance said that when she was first asked to introduce her husband, vice presidential candidate JD Vance, Republican National Conventionshe was “at a loss.” What could she add to the Ron Howard film that had already been made about his life and his own life? bestselling memoir?
In her five-minute speech, she decided to give the thousands in attendance at the RNC and the millions watching the convention a glimpse of what he was like when she met him – for the Nomination for Vice Presidentthe Ohio Senate seat, and for “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
The two met at Yale Law School when “he was just out of graduate school at Ohio State University, where he was studying with support from the GI Bill,” Usha Vance said.
J.D. Vance served in the Marine Corps, enlisting in 2003 and serving until 2007. Usha Vance attended Yale for both her bachelor’s and law degrees and holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Cambridge. She also clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and for Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court.
“We were friends first, because, I mean, who wouldn’t want to be friends with JD? He was, then as now, the most interesting person I knew, a blue-collar guy who’d overcome childhood traumas I could hardly imagine to get into Yale Law School, a tough Marine who’d served in Iraq but whose idea of a good time was playing with puppies and watching the movie ‘Babe,’” Usha Vance said.
She recalled that he was also “the most determined person I knew,” with an “overriding ambition to be a husband and father.”
Usha Vance’s upbringing was very different from her husband’s, she told the audience. Originally from San Diego, she grew up in a stable, close-knit family. Her father is an aerospace engineer and her mother is a provost at the University of California San Diego.
“That JD and I were able to meet at all, let alone fall in love and get married, is a testament to this great country,” she said. “It’s also a testament to JD, and it tells you something about who he is.”
“When JD met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm,” Usha Vance added. “He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.” And she said that although “he’s a meat-and-potatoes guy, he accommodated my vegetarian diet,” saying he even learned to cook Indian food from her mother.
“The JD I knew then is the same JD you see today, minus the beard,” she said, “and his goals in this new role are the same ones he pursues for our family: keeping people safe, creating opportunities to build better lives, and solving problems with an open mind.”
“I can safely say that neither JD nor I expected to find ourselves in this situation, but it’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American Dream than a boy from Middletown, Ohio,” she said.
Emily Hung contributed to this report.
