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But now that Joe Biden has won the White House, his 69-year-old wife will have a chance to advance the role of first lady in the 21st century, keeping her full-time job as a teacher.
“Most American women have both a work life and a family life, but first ladies have never been allowed to,” said Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University.
“Perhaps the time has come, however, when more Americans are comfortable with a first lady who is not on duty in the White House 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Of course, Biden has for years been a trusted advisor to her 77-year-old husband, who defeated the incumbent President Donald Trump.
As first lady, she is expected to work on education issues and relaunch Joining Forces, a mission to mobilize military families that she and Michelle Obama began in 2011.
But she’s also a teacher, mother, grandmother, and the stone that kept Biden going after the tragedy nearly five decades ago.
In 1972, Joe Biden faced the unthinkable: His young wife and daughter were killed in a car accident and he was left alone to raise his two young children, both injured in the accident.
Enter Jill Jacobs, who was born in 1951 and grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His father rose in banking from teller to president, and his mother was a homemaker.
Jill was in the process of divorcing her first husband when she met Biden, a widower who commuted daily from Delaware to Washington, where he was serving as a United States Senator.
The couple married in 1977 and she became the “mom” to their children Hunter and Beau.
The Bidens have a daughter, Ashley, who was born in 1981.
While raising his family, Biden also earned two master’s degrees. He would eventually earn a Ph.D. in education and now teaches at Northern Virginia Community College.
Since then, the couple have been through two failed presidential careers, his eight years as vice president, the death of Beau Biden after a battle with cancer, and now a successful campaign in the White House.
“She brought us back together,” Biden said in a video shown at the Democratic National Convention in August, describing Jill’s impact on the family scarred by tragedy.
“She is so damn tough and loyal.”
Biden took on the role of second lady in 2009 when her husband became Barack Obama’s vice president, participating in high-profile events with First Lady Michelle and developing a comfortable style of public speaking.
During her husband’s third run for the White House, Biden was one of his most effective and forceful substitutes.
He campaigned tirelessly, crossing early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire and battlefields like Florida and Michigan down the stretch, often headlining smaller events.
She presented her husband as the candidate who best appealed not only to moderate Democrats, but also to independents and Republicans disappointed in Trump.
In March, she found herself in the role of protector at an event in Los Angeles, when she dramatically defended herself from two protesters who pounced on her husband on stage.
“We’re fine,” he said to reassure her.
In her convention speech in a classroom at a Wilmington high school where she taught English in the 1990s, she attested to her husband’s character, abilities and heart.
“How can you build a broken family?” He said of Biden’s persistence through adversity, a quality he believes connects him to millions of American families suffering from the pandemic, mass layoffs and racial tensions.
“In the same way that a complete nation is made,” he added. “With love and understanding, and with small acts of compassion. With courage. With unshakable faith.”
Biden, who has fiercely protected her family throughout her husband’s career, has prepared against attacks by Trump and his allies against him.
Perhaps you are now preparing for four years in the White House, and a hectic schedule of teaching and working in the east wing.
“If Biden continues to teach, it will forever change the expectations and constraints of the position,” Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies,” told AFP.
“I think it could be challenging, balancing a job and the tremendous work of the first lady, but I also think it will expand our ideas of what first ladies are capable of,” she said.
Jellison warned that Biden could face a backlash from those who want a more traditional first lady, but she and Brower agreed that the time for a change has come.
“We will surely have a male presidential spouse one day and I don’t think anyone would expect him to quit his day job,” Brower said.
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