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Their love story contains all the textbook rom-com characters: A high-powered career woman navigating politics and personal life. A handsome LA entertainment lawyer sharing two kids with his ex-wife. And a meddling best friend who just wanted to see the godmother of her children happy.
But it’s also a political drama. When then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris married Doug Emhoff ten years ago, after a whirlwind year-long romance, it marked a private triumph for a pioneering public figure. And it also set the stage for history: America has spent the past few years watching the country’s first Black, Asian and female vice president, with a white man in the supporting role.
As Harris takes over for Joe Biden in the battle against Donald Trump for the presidency, a move that could see the glass ceiling shattered with the first ever woman president, Emhoff gets closer and closer to a historic role himself: the first First Gentleman of the United States of America.
And it all started with a blind date set up by Harris’ bestie.
It was 2013, and Harris was serving as California’s attorney general; having already established a trailblazing name for herself after working for years as San Francisco’s very first district attorney of color.
“As a single, professional woman in my forties, and very much in the public eye, dating wasn’t easy,” Harris writes in her 2019 memoir The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. “I knew that if I brought a man with me to an event, people would immediately start to speculate about our relationship.
“I also knew that single women in politics are viewed differently than single men. We don’t get the same latitude when it comes to our social lives. I had no interest in that kind of scrutiny unless I was close to sure I’d found ‘the One’ – which meant that for years, I kept my personal life compartmentalized from my career.”
That’s when her friend who’s “like a sister,” Chrisette Hudlin, stepped in. The mother of Harris’ godchildren, Chrisette and her husband, House Party and Django Unchained producer Reggie Hudlin, met with Emhoff for “legal advice,” the entertainment lawyer told DC high school students two years ago.
“By the end of that hour, Chrisette was trying to set me up with her best friend, who happened to be named Kamala Harris,” Emhoff said, according to the Washington Examiner.
Chrisette, indeed, had decided to play matchmaker – particularly after the lawyer mentioned he’d met Harris at an event and “said something to the effect of ‘She’s really hot,’” the producer’s wife told Marie Claire in 2020. “He was complimenting her, and at the same time he was admiring her, and I liked that. I thought, Oh, what’s your deal?”
“I was looking at him as more of a lawyer, but by the end of the meeting I was just liking him as a person,” she told the magazine of Emhoff, then a partner in charge of law firm Venable LLP’s Los Angeles office. “And that doesn’t happen a lot, period.”
Immediately afterwards, Chrisette was “blowing up” her girlfriend’s phone while Harris was in a meeting.
“I ignored her call the first several times, but then I started to get worried,” Harris writes in her memoir. “Her children are my godchildren. Had something happened?”
When she answered, Chrisette promptly told the AG that she was “going on a date,” adding: “I just met this guy. He’s cute and he’s the managing partner of his law firm and I think you’re going to really like him. He’s based in Los Angeles, but you’re always here for work anyway.’”
Emhoff texted Harris a few nights later, and they made plans to talk the following day – only for him to place an early-morning phone call that she missed.
“The voicemail, which I still have saved to this day, was long and a little rambling,” she writes. “He sounded like a nice guy, though, and I was intrigued to learn more.
“Doug, on the other hand, was pretty sure that he had ruined his chances. The way he tells it, he thought his voicemail had been disastrous and that he’d likely never hear from me again. He had to restrain himself from calling again and leaving another long-winded message trying to explain the first one.”
Instead, thankfully for Emhoff, she rang him back and the pair enjoyed an hour-long lunchtime conversation – a rarity for the busy AG. She flew to LA for their first date days later. They hit it off, enjoyed a second date and soon made things serious.
“For our third date, Doug decided that a grand gesture was in order,” Harris writes. “He flew to Sacramento to meet me for dinner. After that, we knew we had something special. We agreed to commit to each other for six months, and to reevaluate our relationship at the end of it.”
He’d concocted an elaborate plan to propose to me in front of the Ponte Vecchio, in Florence. But once he had the ring, it was burning a hole in his pocket. He couldn’t keep it secret.— Kamala Harris on how her husband Doug Emhoff proposed
About two months in, Harris met Emhoff’s two children from his previous marriage to Kirsten, a film producer and production company CEO, in person. His daughter, Ella, was in middle school, while his son, Cole, was a high schooler; the children were named after famed musicians Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane.
Harris writes about bonding with them over music and discussing school events; they even invited her to an art show.
“Doug later joked that I got completely inundated with their lives that night, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I was hooked, and Cole and Ella reeled me in,” Harris writes.
In March 2014, while a frustrated Harris was searching for black pants while packing for a romantic trip to Italy and trying to decide on a takeout order, Emhoff proposed. She was reading a Thai menu in her apartment and didn’t quite realize the importance when he told her: “I want to spend my life with you” – until he repeated it.
“When I looked up, he was getting down on one knee,” she writes. “He’d concocted an elaborate plan to propose to me in front of the Ponte Vecchio, in Florence. But once he had the ring, it was burning a hole in his pocket. He couldn’t keep it secret.
“I looked at him there, on one knee, and burst into tears,” she writes. “Mind you, these were not graceful Hollywood tears streaming down a glistening cheek. No, I’m talking about snorting and grunting, with mascara smudging my face.
“Doug reached for my hand and I held my breath and smiled back. Then he asked me to marry him, and I bellowed a tear-soaked ‘Yes!’”
The couple, then both 49, married on August 22, 2014, with Harris’ sister, Maya – also a lawyer and public policy advocate – officiating. The AG’s niece, Meena – a Harvard Law School grad, now a venture capitalist and CEO/founder of progressive media company Phenomenal Media — read from Maya Angelou.
“In keeping with our respective Indian and Jewish heritage, I put a flower garland around Doug’s neck, and he stomped on a glass,” Harris writes in her memoir.
Instead of any traditional word for stepmother, Emhoff’s children decided to call Harris “Momala.”
And it wouldn’t be long before the new blended family would be thrown into much larger spotlights. A little more than two years later, Harris was elected to the US Senate; she took office in January 2017, and her memoir came out two years later – as she geared up for a presidential run.
Harris dropped out of the 2020 race in December 2019 – but was formally nominated as Biden’s running mate the next summer during the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.
“She made that decision [to drop out of the presidential race] and I would have supported whatever she decided,” Emhoff told Marie Claire weeks after the VP nomination. “But I’m not her political adviser. I’m her husband. And so my role was to be there for her, to love her, to have her back, to talk it through, to help her.”
Just a few short months later, Emhoff was standing next to his wife on the steps of the Capitol in January 2021 as she was sworn in as the nation’s first female vice president. The first thing Harris did after becoming Vice President was turn and hug her husband; Emhoff, for his part, then turned and fist-bumped Biden.
Since then, Emhoff has been a visible presence by his wife’s side, also dutifully posting social media messages in support of the administration’s work – interspersed with family photos and pictures from his journeys through the country. His tenure is also historic; not only is he the first male spouse of a vice president, but he’s also the first Jewish spouse.
Among his myriad White House duties, he toldLos Angeles Lawyer in May, a passion is “fighting anti-semitism, and hate in general, including Islamophobia … I spent a lot of time on these kinds of issues, including to really help to drive the first-ever national strategy to combat anti-semitism, which will include a strategy to counter Islamophobia.”
Emhoff left LA law firm DLA Piper in August 2020, after his wife’s VP nomination, but has been teaching classes at Georgetown since his move to DC. He told Los Angeles Lawyer that he missed his law career – but that it had prepared him, especially as an entertainment attorney in Hollywood, for some of the VP spousal duties.
“I went from something not only that I loved so much – I loved my partners, my colleagues, the clients, the business, the town – and it was such a big part of who I was, and I was good at it,” Emhoff told the law publication. “It was a big part of my identity. Then, to go from that on a dime – literally on a dime – to something completely different that has never been done before, it’s a jarring and surreal situation.
“However, that said, look at what I’m doing. I get to support my wife – the first woman vice president of the nation. And I get to represent this country that I love so much and to travel around the country and the world, representing the United States of America … It helps her, it helps the president, and it helps the administration.
“So, it’s endlessly fascinating. It’s something that if I were to leave the profession, which I love so much, this is a pretty amazing way to do it.”
Emhoff’s official account on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, is @SecondGentleman. That could soon be upgraded to First, if Harris is successful in the down-and-dirty race against the 45th President.
Emhoff gave a more emotional tribute to the Bidens before introducing his wife to campaign staff this week at her first public appearance since declaring that she was running for the nomination, nearly tearing up as he recalled the President’s support.
“He’s had my back personally,” during some of “my toughest moments as Second Gentleman,” Emhoff said. “One, leaving the career that I loved, it was always the President that came up to me and said, ‘Kid, look, I know you’re a great lawyer; I know this must have been tough. What better way to leave that than to support your wife that you love so much and your country that you love so much?’”
And, true to the couple’s rom-com-worthy roots – perhaps in a nod to the genre and their own meet-cute, they even enjoy “90-minute rom-coms” on Netflix in their downtime, he’s told Marie Claire — Emhoff is endearingly playing the supporting role of charming partner in real life. Already he’s been thrown into the deep end when it comes to filling the shoes of the First Spouse, reportedly replacing Dr Biden as the campaign’s representative for upcoming fundraisers in New England.
Emhoff and Harris will celebrate ten years of being married next month; she still plays his fateful first voicemail on their anniversary.
“I’m not overly political,” Emhoff told Marie Claire – right before he’d earn his Second Gentleman title.
“I’m overly her husband.”
