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It’s hard to overstate how instrumental and influential Usha Chilukuri Vance, wife of GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance, has been in helping shape Vance into the man he is today, according to his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” Now that Vance is the GOP nominee for vice president, she could become the second lady of the United States.
Vance met Usha Chilukuri when they were both students at Yale Law School. The daughter of Indian immigrants to the U.S. who were also professors, she was born in San Diego, California, and attended Yale University for undergad as well. When Vance learned she was single, he immediately asked her out, he said in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.” After a single date, Vance said he told her he was in love with her. They eventually married in 2014.
How Usha influenced who JD is today
Vance, who grew up around poverty, addiction, violence and broken families, wrote that he experienced culture shock when he was thrust into the so-called “elite” culture of Yale Law. Law school was filled with cocktail hours and dinners where he didn’t know anything about wine beyond “white” and “red,” tasted sparkling water for the first time and didn’t know which piece of silverware to use for which dish.
“Go from outside to inside, and don’t use the same utensil for separate dishes,” Usha told him when Vance excused himself to call her from the restroom at one such event, according to his book.
Usha, as Vance describes in his book, became his “Yale spirit guide,” helping him navigate the culture and expectations of his newfound, upper-class world.
“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide,” Vance wrote. “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know how to ask, and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed.”
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Vance admired Usha’s intelligence and directness, and he describes her patience as critical to him in those early years of his new life in sophisticated America. But Usha and her family were also critical in showing Vance how families and individuals could discuss matters calmly, without resorting to anger.
“The sad fact is that I couldn’t do it without Usha,” Vance wrote. “Even at my best, I’m a delayed explosion — I can be defused, but only with skill and precision. It’s not just that I’ve learned to control myself, but that Usha has learned how to manage me. Put two of me in the same house and you have a positively radioactive situation.”
Vance’s biological father left when he was a toddler, and his mother struggled with drug addiction, while Usha’s parents had been stably married for decades.
“Usha hadn’t learned how to fight in the hillbilly school of hard knocks,” Vance wrote. “The first time I visited her family for Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the lack of drama. Usha’s mother didn’t complain about her father behind his back. There was no suggestions that good family friends were liars or backstabbers, no angry exchanges between a man’s wife and the same man’s sister. Usha’s parents seemed to genuinely like her grandmother and spoke of their siblings with love.”
Vance describes a time in his book when he was driving in Ohio with Usha when someone cut him off. Vance honked, and the driver flipped him off. When they stopped at a red light, Vance writes he “unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the car door.”
“I planned to demand an apology (and fight the guy if necessary), but my common sense prevailed and I shut the door before I got out of the car. Usha was delighted that I’d changed my mind,” Vance wrote.
“For the first 18 or so years of my life, standing down would have earned me a verbal lashing as a ‘p***y’ or a ‘wimp’ or a ‘girl,'” Vance added.
Vance says Usha read every single word of his “Hillbilly Elegy” manuscript “literally dozens of times,” offering important feedback.
What Usha does now
Now 38, Usha Chilukuri Vance is an accomplished litigator in her own right. She clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh was a federal judge. The Vances have three young children.
She is a member of the D.C. Bar, and most recently worked as an attorney for the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP until Vance’s nomination.
“Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” the firm told CBS Bay Area. “Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career.”
Her husband is a Roman Catholic, but her religious background is Hindu.