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- Former Vice President Joe Biden won the 2020 race for the presidency, beating the incumbent President Donald Trump, major media outlets, including Insider, project.
- Biden spoke to the nation from Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday and following his speech was joined on stage by members of his family, including his wife, Jill, his children, and his grandchildren.
- Here’s what we know about Biden and the incoming first family of the United States.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has been elected the 46th president of the United States, Insider and Decision Desk HQ projected Friday, ousting incumbent President Donald Trump.
He’ll bring with him Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and be tasked with appointing aides and members to fill his cabinet. But he’ll also bring with him the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, his three children, and his seven grandchildren.
Here’s a look at some of the people closest to the president-elect who could appear at The White House following Biden’s inauguration in January.
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President-elect Joe Biden, 77, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 20, 1942.
From 2009 to 2017, Biden served as the vice president of the United States during the administration of former President Barack Obama. Prior, from 1973 until 2009, Biden served as a US senator from Delaware.
Before he won the race for president against incumbent President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Biden ran two unsuccessful bids for the Oval Office, first in 1988 and again in the 2008 election.
In the 2020 Democratic primary race, Biden beat out a number of candidates to earn the party’s nomination, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the vice president-elect, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s first wife, Neilia, died in a car accident in 1972. Their daughter, Naomi, was also killed in the accident.
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President-elect Joe Biden married his first wife, Neilia, in August 1966 after he met the Syracuse University student while he was on a spring break trip in the Bahamas, according to Biography.
The two had three children — Joseph “Beau” Biden III in February 1969, Robert “Hunter” Biden in February 1970, and Naomi “Amy” Biden in November 1971, according to Biography.
Biden was instrumental in Biden’s first campaign for the Senate.
On December 18, 1972, she, and their daughter were killed in a car accent. Beau Biden suffered a broken leg, while Hunter survived the accident with a fractured skull, according to Biography.
Biden married the future first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, on June 17, 1977.
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According to Town & Country, Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden, 67, was born in Hammonton, New Jersey, but grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. She attended college at the University of Delaware with her first husband in 1970, whom she divorced before meeting the former vice president.
The future first lady met the then-senator on a blind date in 1975. The two instantly connected, although Biden proposed five times before Jill eventually agreed to marry him, she told Vogue. The future first lady helped raise Biden’s three children and the couple had a child of their own in 1981.
Biden plans to be the only first lady in US history to hold a job outside of the White House. She is a university professor with a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and a doctorate of education. For eight years, during her time as a second lady, Biden taught at Northern Virginia Community College.
“I want people to value teachers and know their contributions and to lift up the profession,” Biden told CBS News in an August interview.
Biden and his first wife had two sons, including Beau, the former attorney general of Delaware who died of brain cancer on May 30, 2015.
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Beau Biden, the president-elect’s first-born son was born on February 3, 1969. He died in 2015 at the age of 46 after a battle with brain cancer.
Biden served two terms as the attorney general of Delaware and even considered a run for governor prior to his death. According to CNN, Biden served as a US prosecutor in Philadelphia for nearly a decade, before he won his first election for attorney general in 2006.
As Business Insider reported at the time of his death, Biden was lauded for his dedication to service, including his year-long tour in Iraq as captain in the Delaware Army National Guard.
Biden was survived by his wife, Hallie, and their two children.
The president-elect’s second-born son, Hunter, has been the subject of scandal and recent conspiracy theories from Trump and Republicans.
Hunter Biden, 50, the second-born son of Joe and Neilia, was born on February 4, 1970. Hunter Biden studied at Georgetown University and graduated in 1992.
Biden’s political aspirations and career have been plagued in controversy and scandal, including his documented struggle with addiction, as documented in this Business Insider report.
Most recently, in October, Biden was the subject of an unverified report from The New York Post, which claimed to have obtained emails and photos from a laptop that once belonged to Biden. The report has been largely discredited but was peddled by Trump his allies in the final weeks preceding his father’s victory, as Business Insider reported.
Biden, alongside his sister, Ashley, introduced Biden at the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention. He also appeared on stage following Biden’s November 7 speech in Wilmington. Hunter Biden married his current wife, Melissa Cohen, in 2019 in Los Angeles, California just six days after they met, according to ABC News.
The future president and first lady have one daughter together, Ashley.
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Ashley Biden was born on June 8, 1981, and is Biden’s youngest child. According to Marie Claire, she is a social worker who in 2012 married Dr. Howard Krein, a Philadelphia-based surgeon.
Biden has previously talked about her passion for social justice activism, telling Glamour in a 2017 interview that her “passion started at a very young age.” From 2014 until 2019, Biden was previously the executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice.
“My dad is a lifelong public servant; my mom was a public-school teacher—it’s in my DNA,” she said.
Biden, a graduate of Tulane University, also owns Livelihood, a company she founded after her brother’s death, which designs and sells American-made clothing to donate proceeds to DC and Delaware-based community organizations, according to Marie Claire.
The company is focused on “supporting criminal justice reform, improving childhood education, and ameliorating economic disparities,” Marie Claire reported.
Biden has seven grandchildren: Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie, Robert, and two others.
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The president-elect and the incoming future first lady have a total of seven grandchildren, according to Harper’s Bazaar.
Naomi is the 26-year-old daughter of Hunter and his first wife, Kathleen Biden, who recently graduated from Columbia Law School, according to Harper’s Bazaar. Her younger sister, the 20-year-old Finnegan, is named after the president-elect’s grandmother, Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden, according to Oprah Magazine.
Maisy Biden, born in 2001, is the youngest of Hunter and Kathleen Biden’s children, and is friends with Sasha Obama, the youngest daughter of former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The late Beau Biden and his widow, Hallie, had two children. Natalie Biden, who is 16 years old, and the 14-year-old Robert “Hunter” Biden II, who is named for his uncle, according to Harper’s Bazaar.
The president-elect’s two youngest grandchildren are also from his son, Hunter. Hunter Biden had initially denied he was the father of the child, born in 2018, but a judge in January ruled that Biden was the anonymous child’s father. Hunter Biden and his current wife, Melissa Cohen, had their first child together in March.
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