Usha Vance has addressed speculation about trouble in her marriage to Vice President JD Vance.
Rumors of divorce have followed the second couple since Usha, 39, was spotted without her wedding ring after JD’s viral hug with Erika Kirk, but the second lady said in a new interview with USA Today published Saturday that the theories lack any validity, and that they have become a “family joke.”
“There are things that I miss and things that I'm excited to have moved on from,” the former lawyer told the outlet about her life before being thrust into the political spotlight. She went on to say that she does not understand how people come to conclusions about her relationship.
“I find that one of the really curious things about this life is that people really like to read the tea leaves, and there's a kind of an industry building stories about everything that they can imagine,” Usha said, adding that the couple finds humor in the conversation but does not “find it fruitful” to keep up with the rumors.
“I’d rather just sort of live in my marriage and in the real world and less in kind of the fever dreams that surround it,” she said. “So I mean, it is kind of a family joke, but also not something that I spend very much time thinking about.”
She also told the outlet about her wedding ring: “I wear it when I wear it, and I don’t when I don’t.”
The Vances were married in 2014 after meeting at Yale Law School. The couple share three young children: sons Ewan, 8, and Vivek, 5, and daughter Mirabel, 3.
Usha hit back at the divorce rumors last month and blamed her ringless appearance on her busy schedule, with her spokesperson telling People at the time that the second lady is “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes.”
The rumors began after JD’s October hug with Kirk, who spoke about similarities between her late husband and the vice president at a Turning Point USA event.
“No one will ever replace my husband. But I do see some similarities of my husband in JD — in Vice President JD Vance. I do,” Kirk said before hugging the vice president on stage.
