How “Spiritual Guide” Osha Vance Led J.D. Vance's Meteoric Rise

When J.D. Vance, a working-class military veteran with a case of imposter syndrome, entered Yale Law School, he may not have looked like someone destined for the presidency of the United States.

Many who know him attribute his remarkable success story to the influence of his wife, Osha Vance, whom he met on an Ivy League campus.

By all accounts, J.D. Vance, 40, has had a meteoric rise. Within three years, he went from long running for the Senate to becoming the third-youngest vice president in American history.

By his side every step of the way was his “spiritual guide,” as he calls her – his wife Usha.

At Yale Law School, the pair were initially friends. Although they participated in a reading group and a social circle, their backgrounds were very different.

Usha Vance, the 39-year-old daughter of Indian immigrants, grew up in suburban San Diego before attending Yale University for her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Her husband grew up in Middleton, Ohio, in a family with roots in the poor Appalachians of eastern Kentucky.

Charles Tyler, a Yale classmate and friend of the couple, told the BBC that their disparate upbringings were what attracted them to each other.

“They've always been this match between very different people,” he said.

In his best-selling 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis,” J.D. Vance recounted how his wife helped him adjust to life at the prestigious law school.

“I have never felt so out of place in my entire life,” he wrote. “But I did it at Yale.”

The vice president-elect described one instance in the book in which his wife taught him which cutlery to use for which part of a formal meal, to pick up the silverware from the outside in.

“OSHA was teaching J.D. the finer aspects of being in an elite institution,” Tyler recalls. “Usha was his guide throughout the process.”

The book explores his first-hand experience with the poverty and addiction of the rural underclass, while offering a glimpse into the Vance family's relationship.

When J.D. Vance was unveiled as Trump's running mate in July's presidential election, his name recognition was limited.

He was the junior senator from Ohio, elected to public office for the first time just two years ago, after serving stints in the Navy, a lawyer and a venture capitalist.

She was an extremely accomplished lawyer who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court and for Appeals Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, before Trump appointed him to the nation's highest court.

Osha Vance was an attorney at the prestigious firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., before stepping down to help her husband run for vice president.

The couple is “a team in every sense of the word,” Jay Chhabria, a family friend and political consultant, told USA Today.

“When he comes out and gives a great speech, she advises him and gives him her opinion, and it is taken seriously,” Chhabria said.

Since her husband became Trump's running mate, the mother of three has embraced a behind-the-scenes role.

Her friends say she avoids the spotlight in part because she wants to protect their young children, ages seven, four and three.

During the campaign cycle, Usha made public statements several times, including when she sat down for an interview with Fox News and to introduce her husband at the party convention.

This speech perhaps gave the public the clearest idea of ​​their marriage.

“It's safe to say that neither J.D. nor I expected to find ourselves in this situation,” she said.

In that letter, Tyler said, she sounded a lot like the friend he still talks to weekly.

“She seems very consistent with the person she is in life,” Tyler said.

From her speech, the Americans discovered that J.D. Vance learned how to cook Indian dishes that suited his wife's vegetarian diet, among other things.

When the time came to defend her husband, she was ready to do so as well.

Last July, past comments by J.D. Vance in which he described some Democratic politicians as “childless cat ladies” resurfaced on social media, and it was his wife who seemed to do the best damage control. To calm the ensuing uproar.

She called his remarks a “joke,” recast them as a reflection of the challenges facing America's working families, and expressed a desire for critics to look at the broader context of what her husband said.

She admitted in an interview with Fox that she did not agree with her husband on all political issues, although she said she never doubted his intentions.

“Osha was not an overly political person at all,” JJ Snidhu, a former colleague of the couple at Yale Law School, told the BBC. “What America has come to see as being admirable and reserved is real — that's who she is.”

Charles Tyler says Osha Vance doesn't fit neatly into any political box.

“The reason a lot of people have a hard time describing her policies is not because she keeps her cards close to the vest, but because they don’t fit into the kind of ideological tribes that most of us have identified with,” he says.

That will likely serve her well as the second lady of the United States, a role that has historically been removed from partisan politics in Washington.

But with J.D. Vance's star on the rise, few who know the power couple doubt that Osha Vance will continue to serve as his spiritual guide, and perhaps even one day as First Lady of the United States.