Couples in Politics With Big Age Differences Between Them

President Joe Biden is nearly nine years older than first lady Dr. Jill Biden.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden.

Win McNamee/Getty Images


Biden was a 33-year-old US senator and Jill was a 24-year-old college senior when they met. Both had been married before. Biden’s wife and daughter died in a car crash in 1972, leaving him a widower with two sons, and Jill and her husband filed for divorce in her junior year. 

“I was a senior, and I had been dating guys in jeans and clogs and T-shirts, he came to the door and he had a sport coat and loafers, and I thought, ‘God, this is never going to work, not in a million years,'” Jill told Vogue in 2016. “He was nine years older than I am! But we went out to see ‘A Man and a Woman’ at the movie theater in Philadelphia, and we really hit it off. When we came home … he shook my hand good night … I went upstairs and called my mother at 1:00 a.m. and said, ‘Mom, I finally met a gentleman.'”

Biden proposed five times before Jill said yes and they wed in 1977. After 44 years together, they still find small ways of surprising and showing their affection for each other.

Leave a Comment