US Vice President J.D. Vance shared a personal story about his family’s first reaction when they learned that his future wife, Usha Vance, was of Indian descent.Speaking about the diary of an executive of British businessman Stephen Bartlett, Vance noted that his mother asked a surprising question after learning about Osha’s Indian heritage: “What tribe?”Vance said it was just a cultural misunderstanding, not bad faith.Usha Vance, born Usha Bala Chillukuri, is the daughter of Indian immigrants who moved to the United States from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Her family has deep roots in the Telugu speaking community and includes many academics and teachers. She was born and raised in California and later graduated from Yale University and Yale Law School.She met J.D. Vance at Yale Law School. The two married in 2014 in an interfaith ceremony that included Christian and Hindu traditions.
Today, they have three children, and are among the oldest political couples in the United States.Over the years, Vance has often spoken about the positive influence Osha and her family have had on him. In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, he described how he was struck by the warmth of her Indian family life, which he said was very different from his upbringing in Ohio and Kentucky. He wrote that Usha’s family showed him a different model of family relationships and support.
Usha has built a successful career of her own. Before becoming the Second Lady, she served as an attorney and clerked for several senior justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and then-federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh. She later worked at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson before moving away from private practice as her husband’s political profile grew. Usha became the first Indian-American Second Lady of the United States and the first Hindu wife of a US Vice President.However, many MAGA nationalists and white supremacists argue that having a brown, Hindu, and Indian second lady hampers the chances of Vance becoming the next president of the United States in 2028.