Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance announced Tuesday that they are expecting a child.
“We’re very excited to share the news that Usha is pregnant with our fourth child, a boy,” the pair announced in a social media post.
“Usha and the baby are doing well and we are all looking forward to welcoming him in late July.”
She is the first second lady to be pregnant while in the White House.
The couple has been married for about 12 years and shares three children under 10: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
The statement added, “During this exciting and hectic time, we are particularly grateful for the military doctors who take excellent care of our family and for the staff members who do so much to ensure that we can serve the country while enjoying a wonderful life with our children.”
It’s worth noting that Vance’s due date in July coincides with “America 250,” the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Events and festivities will take place across the country.
An interfaith marriage
Vice President Vance, 41, officially converted to Catholicism in 2019. During a public appearance in November last year, Vance noted that Usha, 40, “grew up in a Hindu” household, adding that her family wasn’t “particularly religious.”
“In fact, when I met my wife, we were both — I would consider myself an agnostic or an atheist, and that’s what I think she would have considered herself too,” he said.
But over the course of their marriage, their personal faiths became an important part of their lives.
“She’s my best friend,” Vance said. “We talk to each other about this stuff. So we decided to raise our kids Christian. Our two oldest kids go to a Christian school.”
He shared that their 8-year-old “was very proud of his First Communion.”
“Everybody has to have their own conversation when you’re in a marriage,” he added.
Vance said that although the second lady joined him at church on Sundays, he hoped they could share his Christian faith together someday.
“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” the vice president added.
The Vances traveled to India, where the second lady’s parents immigrated from, on a four-day diplomatic trip last year.
They met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visited iconic landmarks like the Taj Mahal, exploring the cities of Delhi, Jaipur and Agra.
Neither former vice presidents Mike Pence nor Kamala Harris ever went to India in their official capacity. Although it’s worth noting that Harris, the former Democratic nominee for president, tried to leverage her Indian American identity to court voters on the campaign trail in the 2024 presidential election.
How did JD Vance meet his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance?
JD and Usha Vance’s love story began at Yale, as the Deseret News previously reported. Vance, in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” said they got to know each other during a class assignment and fell in love.
During their time in college, the pair were on The Yale Law Journal’s masthead in 2012; Vance was an editor and his wife was the executive development editor. They also organized discussion groups surrounding the decline in rural America, which became the basis of the vice president’s memoir.
Vance withdrew his clerkship application so as not to lose his budding relationship. Later, they decided to go through the process together.
Vance had a tough childhood; his mother struggled with drug addiction. In his book, he wrote about struggling to deal with relationship problems and thought getting away from the intense emotions would help, “but Usha wouldn’t let me,” he wrote.
“I tried to break everything off multiple times but she told me that was stupid unless I didn’t care about her.”
Vance detailed the experience of visiting her family for Thanksgiving in his memoir, saying, “I was amazed by the lack of drama.”
“Usha’s mother didn’t complain about her father behind his back. There were no suggestions that good family friends were liars or backstabbers, no angry exchanges between a man’s wife and the same man’s sister,” Vance said. “Usha’s parents seemed to genuinely like her grandmother and spoke of their siblings with love.”
The pair tied the knot a year after graduating in an interfaith marriage ceremony in Kentucky. Canadian conservative Member of Parliament Jamil Jivani, who is close to Vance and called him a brother in a social media post, performed the Bible reading at the wedding.