For those who seem interested in the age of Jill Biden. Jill Biden is 9 years younger than her husband Joseph Biden. Not the Joe Biden Sex Scandal the republicans are looking for I'm sure
Jill Biden (born Jill Tracy Jacobs in June 1951) is an American educator and the wife of the senior United States Senator from Delaware, and 2008 presumptive Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, Joe Biden. They were married on June 17, 1977, about five years after Joe Biden's first wife died in a car accident. Together they have a daughter Ashley, born on June 8, 1981.
Jill Biden has never been shy about saying that politics aren't her life or her love.
But she's also been quick to point out that when she married Joe Biden in 1977, she knew she was marrying into politics as surely as she was marrying into the Biden family.
"It was Joe, the boys and the state of Delaware," Jill said in a 2007 interview.
One daughter, five grandchildren and a teaching career later, it's Joe and the country.\
As the wife of Barack Obama's pick for vice president, the college English instructor will be on display, as she was Saturday, wearing a light gold suit that glowed as brightly as Joe's smile in Springfield.
She was beaming, but who wouldn't be after her husband had just told the world she was "drop-dead gorgeous"?
"I think she's going to be a real plus," said Michele Rollins, a die-hard Chateau Country Republican. "She has a lot of dedication to young people. She's a great hostess, a great mother. She'll be wonderful."
Gov. Ruth Ann Minner called Jill a warm, wonderful and friendly person. "I don't know that she loves to campaign, but she and Michelle [Obama] both will be very active," she said.
She may not be in the spotlight as much as Michelle Obama, but she's got a readymade issue: Education.
"As a mother as well as a teacher, I would add that education is not just about reading, writing and arithmetic -- it's about teaching our children how to keep themselves healthy," Jill told Time magazine.
Romance blossoms
Born in Hammonton, N.J., and raised in Willow Grove, Pa., Jill was a senior at the University of Delaware when she met Biden, who was in his first term as senator and a widowed father of two boys, Beau and Hunter.
She had voted for Biden the first time she was eligible to vote, even before she met him at a fundraiser. He had seen her photo and told his brother, who knew her at UD, that he would like to date her.
When Biden called to ask her out, she told him she had plans. He asked her to break the date. She told him to call her back in a half-hour -- and then called off the date and told the guy she had to meet a friend from Washington, D.C.
After they married, she gave up her teaching job to raise Beau, Hunter and Ashley, the daughter she and Joe had in 1981. She returned to her career, teaching high school and at Delaware Technical & Community College, and earning a Ph.D. in education from the University of Delaware.
"It sounds so trite to say I make a difference, but I really feel, especially in a community college, I can make a difference," Jill said.
Jill was so determined that she would earn her degrees and career on her own that she used her maiden name, Jacobs.
"I wanted everything to be on my own," Jill said, but she also says she couldn't have done it without Joe. He sat in a nearby classroom while Jill defended her thesis. She came home to this sign he'd placed along the driveway: "Dr. and Senator Biden live here."
Dedicated to good causes
Jill wins great praise for her ability to connect with people.
She has the knack of making anyone feel like they are having a warm, personal conversation. When you talk, she focuses just on you. When she talks, you can feel the editing lessons learned teaching writing. She answers questions with just enough detail to make a point, but never so much that you feel like you're getting too much information.
She prefers a background role, but she's made at least two exceptions. After several friends were diagnosed with breast cancer, she founded the Biden Breast Health Initiative, designed to teach high school girls about breast self-exams and breast health. She also serves as chairwoman of Delaware Boots on the Ground, a nonprofit that helps military families.
It's an issue she became sensitive to while campaigning and an issue about to hit home as the Bidens' son, Beau, attorney general of Delaware, heads overseas Oct. 3 with his Army National Guard unit.
"Defending our nation should not just be left to the sacrifices of a few, but the commitment of us all," Jill wrote in a column for The News Journal.
A plus to the campaign
She is such a Delaware fixture that you could almost hear a collective gasp when she was involved in a January wreck in which a tractor-trailer hit her car. No one was seriously injured, but the accident sparked memories of the 1972 wreck that killed Joe's first wife, Neilia, and their 18-month-old daughter, Naomi, after a tractor-trailer hit their station wagon.
Jill will be a plus in the campaign, Rollins predicted.
"Here she is a young mother with a Ph.D. in education, teaching in the public school system and supporting her husband who rides the train back and forth every day.
"She's attractive, supportive and she's bright. And she's got her finger on the one issue -- and that is the education of our kids."
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