Kamala Harris became the first woman, first Black woman, and the first person of South Asian descent to be elected vice president of the United States. With her win, Harris' husband Douglas Emhoff became the first male spouse of any vice president or president, making him the second gentleman of the U.S.
Emhoff played an important role in the campaign for Joe Biden's presidency and appeared with his wife Harris at several campaign events. After Biden quashed President Donald Trump's re-election bid, Emhoff took the opportunity to wish Harris on Twitter. Posting a picture of him and Harris hugging, Emhoff tweeted: "So proud of you."
Who is Douglas Emhoff?
Emhoff is a 56-year-old entertainment lawyer based in California, where Harris is the senator. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents Michael and Barbara Emhoff. In 1969, he moved with his family to Southern California from New Jersey, where he lived till 1981. He studied at California State University at Northridge in 1987 and received his law degree in 1990 from USC's Gould School of Law.
Since 2017, Emhoff became a partner with the firm DLA Piper and worked on cases related to production companies, a former NFL athlete and also a sports nutrition company. One of his popular cases was the one where he defended an advertising agency in a case about the rights to the Taco Bell chihuahua that starred in the "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" ads.
After Biden selected Harris as his running mate, Emhoff took a leave of absence from his work in a bid to focus on the Biden-Harris campaign.
Emhoff was married to producer Kerstin Mackin for 16 years before separating and has two children Cole and Ella. In August, Harris revealed that Cole and Ella call her "Momala."
"I've had a lot of titles over my career, and certainly vice president will be great. But Momala will always be the one that means the most," Harris said in her acceptance speech for the vice president.
In 2013, he met Harris at a blind date and the two married in 2014 in Santa Barbara, California. This April he spoke about how he fell in love with Harris and pursued her.
"I famously sent her an email that was something like, 'Hey, I'm too old, you know, to hide the ball. I'm really into this. Let's just make this work.' So we decided to give it six months and just not talk about it, and if at the end of that six months we still felt the way we did, we were just going to go for it. And that's exactly what happened," Emhoff told Chasten Buttigieg in the interview.
