NEW YORK – She has always been beside him for 45 years, now she will become the mistress of the White House. Jill Tracy Jacob Biden she was married to a former (American) football player when on a blind date (organized by Joe’s brother, her college friend) in March 1975 she saw the new president of the United States for the first time. “I’ve finally met a gentleman,” she said to her mother, perplexed by the age difference, the broken marriage and that young senator with a family drama and two dependent children behind him. He had seen it right, optimistic and stubborn, teacher in public schools (she has a master’s in English literature and a PhD in education science), ready to be a mother to two children who are not her own (then her daughter Ashley will be born).
She was always close to him, in the victorious and in the lost congressional campaigns, up to the White House lived for eight years as a “Second Lady”, inevitably overshadowed by the media appeal of Michelle Obama. Always at his side even in the primary, with Biden who liked to present himself at the rallies as “the husband of Jill Biden“. In the second row when needed, energetic if it was time to defend Joe, like when she pushed back a protester who had come dangerously close to her husband during a rally in Los Angeles
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Busy at work (she still teaches at a college in Virginia), but family comes first for her, especially now that her children have given her four granddaughters. Merit of Italian origin, he recounted in his memoirs, of the adolescence lived among the Italian-Americans of Philadelphia. “I’m a Philly girl, I’m proud of it”, she said during a recent “virtual” meeting, recalling that the great-grandparents who arrived from Sicily were called Giacobba, who ate on Sundays “spaghetti, meatballs, chops and the house smelled of oregano, basil , fresh tomatoes and garlic ». He will also bring this tradition to the White House, where he already plans to revitalize Michelle’s garden, which has been in disuse since The Donald arrived. It will also bring the two dogs, the two German Shepherds, Major and Champ.
Her energy and optimism have seduced Biden’s staff, where they are all convinced that at 69 years of age Jill will be able to convince many Americans of how important it is, today more than ever, to be united. “She will take the position of First Lady into the 21st century,” say her friends who know her well, “because most American women are like her: they have to balance work and family life.”
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