Are You Suddenly Curious About Doug Emhoff?
An old photo of the guy who might just be our future First Gentleman has some people wanting to know more.
This week, your steady stream of Kamala Harris–Brat memes may have been briefly interrupted by an old photo of Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff. At first, it might have looked kind of like a meme, too, but it was in fact a real (if heavily saturated) photo, showing a young Doug and his shiny lick of dark hair smirking for a (film) camera somewhere near a beach. The rumpled sleeves of his turquoise Laguna Beach tee were clinging to his perfectly unevenly tanned biceps. His eyebrows were arranged in a position I can only describe as Schlossbergian. Do I need to tell you people are really horny for this photo?
i need Gen z to see this picture of Kamala’s husband in the 80s and make him TikTok’s white boy of the month @SecondGentleman pic.twitter.com/qYeFS8kplX
— Peanut Butter Pretzels (@onedankmom) July 24, 2024
#MeAt20 pic.twitter.com/tRotGuA732
— Doug Emhoff (@DouglasEmhoff) April 17, 2020
Until now, most of us knew Emhoff only as a Stan Smith–wearing guy who loves selfies and supporting his wife. Now that we have seen him like this, a lot of us are curious about the multilayered man behind those hazel peepers. Let’s get to know this California hunk, shall we?
First things first. Is this photo real?
It appears this really is a photo of our nation’s Second Gentleman. In April 2020, Emhoff posted it on X with the caption #MeAt20. Other photos from his early years suggest that this wasn’t a fluke and he did, in fact, look like that.
#MeAt20 pic.twitter.com/tRotGuA732
— Doug Emhoff (@DouglasEmhoff) April 17, 2020
Who is Doug Emhoff?
Emhoff was born in Brooklyn but grew up in New Jersey before relocating to Los Angeles in the late ’80s when he was in high school. Emhoff has described his time in L.A. as “pretty incredible” — he compared it to Fast Times at Ridgemont High — so it sounds like he was enjoying himself. (See also: that photo.) Anyway, he ended up at California State University for college and then headed to USC Gould School of Law. After graduating, he made a name for himself as an entertainment lawyer specializing in creative intellectual property. His most high-profile case was a lawsuit against Taco Bell, which two Michigan men had accused of stealing the idea for the “psycho Chihuahua” in its “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” commercial from the ’90s. Emhoff defended the ad agency that had helped put the commercial together and ended up making sure Taco Bell — and not the ad agency — was responsible for paying the guys $42 million. Go, Doug!
Emhoff married a film producer named Kerstin in 1992, and together they had two children, Cole and Ella. (They are named after jazz musicians John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald.) Emhoff and Kerstin were married until 2008, when they entered into what has become a chill conscious uncoupling — Kamala Harris and Kerstin are close friends, and Harris has joked that their lovely family is “a little too functional.”
How did he and Harris meet?
Speaking of Harris: In 2013, Emhoff was living life as a high-powered lawyer–slash–divorced dad when his client Chrisette Hudlin set him up on a date with her friend Kamala Harris. At the time, Harris was the California State general attorney. Emhoff, according to his own account, reacted to the prospect of going on a date with her by saying, “She’s hot!” After several endearingly awkward phone calls on his end, he says, they met and got serious fast — they got married the following year at the Santa Barbara courthouse, with Harris’s sister officiating an interfaith ceremony that involved a flower garland, per Hindu tradition, and Emhoff following the Jewish custom of breaking a glass.
What does he do as the Second Gentleman?
In 2020, Emhoff left his law-firm post when Joe Biden won the election to head off concerns about conflict of interest. He’s taught a few classes at Georgetown Law since settling in D.C. but seems to mostly focus on his Second Gentleman duties. Last year, he led a roundtable with the Congressional Dads Caucus to talk about the administration’s work around family issues like child care and parental leave.
Emhoff, who’s the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice-president, has played a big role in the White House’s antisemitism efforts. In December 2022, shortly after Donald Trump dined with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, Emhoff organized a roundtable with the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish leaders, and six months later he was one of the team members Biden recruited to launch an ambitious strategy to counter antisemitism in the U.S. Since war broke out in Gaza, he has continued to express concern about antisemitic attacks on American Jews and has warned against conflating the beliefs of individual Jewish people with the actions of the Israeli government. Though his own feelings on Israel’s policies are a little murky — Harris has more explicitly called for a temporary cease-fire — he made efforts to include Arab Americans in his outreach in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attacks and condemned “Islamophobia and hate of every kind” on Twitter. (Emhoff’s daughter, Ella, is more forthcoming — in March, she caused conservative uproar when she posted a Gaza humanitarian fundraising campaign to her Instagram Stories.)
Anything else?
In possibly his most momentous political contribution to date, Emhoff says he filmed the widely memed video of his wife telling Biden, “We did it, Joe!” on the morning the election was called in his favor in November 2020. (The couple was apparently out on a jog together when they got the news.) “It’s a pretty iconic video — that I took,” he told The 19th in 2022.
Why does everyone keep calling him a wife guy?
Though 20-year-old California Doug may appeal to our basest instincts, he has always held the more wholesome allure of an endearing wife guy — a moniker he used to describe himself well before the rest of the country did. None of them are wrong. For one thing, he is Harris’s biggest fan, endlessly posting about her and her campaign with enthusiasm of 17 KHive stan accounts.
???? pic.twitter.com/maiqleg5Qv
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) July 24, 2024
In being such a good wife guy, Emhoff has also become a pretty cool model for the first male White House spouse. He has been widely lauded for putting aside his career as the wives of presidents and vice-presidents have done before him. But luckily for Emhoff, this is a man who appears to thrive in the passenger seat. He can pick a pet issue and give it the respect it deserves without jostling for the spotlight. When Biden was first elected, he wrote an essay about how “humbling” it had been to join the campaign trail and hear Americans’ stories. Also, one look at his face tells me can go all out on tasteful holiday décor. I wouldn’t want any other guy to be America’s first First Gentleman.
Perhaps most tellingly: Shortly after taking credit for the “We did it, Joe!” video, Emhoff told The 19th that he really wanted to be remembered as “a man who was supporting his wife who was the first woman vice-president.” Perhaps he might one day be a man who supports his wife who is the first woman president …?
Related