Jill Biden

Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden (born June 3, 1951) is an American educator who has been the first lady of the United States since 2021 as the wife of President Joe Biden.

Jill Tracy Jacobs was born on June 3, 1951, in Hammonton, New Jersey.

She is the oldest of five sisters.

Her father, Donald Carl Jacobs, was a bank teller and U.S. Navy signalman during World War II who used the G.I. Bill to attend business school and then worked his way up in the banking field.

His family name had been Giacoppo (or some variation thereof); before his father, and others in the family, had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso (Messina) in Italy.

The name had then been changed to Jacobs, about a month after the family had entered the United States.

Her mother, Bonny Jean (Godfrey) Jacobs, was a homemaker of English and Scottish descent.

As a child, she and her family lived in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, and relocated when she was eight to Mahwah, New Jersey.

Her father was the CEO of the Mahwah Savings and Loan Association.

In 1961, the Jacobs family moved to Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, a northern suburb of Philadelphia, and Donald became the president and CEO of InterCounty Savings and Loan in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia.

He held that position for twenty years.

Her parents labeled themselves as "agnostic realists" and did not attend church, but she often attended Sunday services at a Presbyterian church with her grandmother.

Later, Jacobs independently took membership classes at nearby Abington Presbyterian Church and, at age 16, was confirmed.

Jill Jacobs always intended to have a career.

She began working at age 15, which included waitressing in Ocean City, New Jersey.

She attended Upper Moreland High School, where, by her own later description, she was somewhat rebellious and enjoyed her social life, along with being a prankster.

However, she has recalled that she always had loved being in English class, and her classmates have said she was a good student.

She graduated in 1969.

Jacobs enrolled in Brandywine Junior College in Pennsylvania for one semester.

She intended to study fashion merchandising but found it unsatisfying.

She married Bill Stevenson, a former college football player, in February 1970 taking the name Jill Stevenson.

Within a couple of years he opened the Stone Balloon in Newark, Delaware, near the University of Delaware.

It became one of the most successful college bars in the nation.

She switched her enrollment to the University of Delaware becoming a student in its College of Arts and Sciences, declaring English as her major.

She took a year off from college and did a little modeling for a local agency in Wilmington to supplement her income.

She and Stevenson drifted apart and they separated in 1974.

She met Senator Joe Biden in March 1975.

They met on a blind date set up by his brother Frank, who had known her in college, though Biden had seen her photograph in a local advertisement.

Although he was nearly nine years her senior, she was impressed by his more formal appearance and manners compared to the college men she had known, and after their first date, she told her mother, "Mom, I finally met a gentleman."

Meanwhile, she was going through turbulent divorce proceedings with Stevenson; the court case ended with her not getting the half-share in the Stone Balloon she had wanted.

She married Joe Biden in 1977, becoming the stepmother of Beau and Hunter, two sons from Joe Biden's first marriage.

Biden and her husband also have a daughter together, Ashley Biden, born in 1981.

She is the founder of the Biden Breast Health Initiative non-profit organization, co-founder of the Book Buddies program, co-founder of the Biden Foundation, is active in Delaware Boots on the Ground, and with Michelle Obama is co-founder of Joining Forces.

She has published a memoir and two children's books.

She was the second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017 when her husband was vice president.

Since 2009, she has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, and is believed to be the first wife of a vice president or president to hold a salaried position during the majority of her husband's tenure.

Biden has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Delaware and master's degrees in education and English from West Chester University and Villanova University, and returned to the University of Delaware for a doctoral degree in education.

She taught English and reading in high schools for thirteen years and instructed adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital.

Following this, she was an English and writing instructor for fifteen years at Delaware Technical & Community College.

Born in Hammonton, New Jersey, Biden grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.