FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance attend the 250th anniversary celebration of the United States Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, California, U.S., October 18, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo | Photo Credit: MIKE BLAKE

US Vice President J. D. Vance, in his upcoming memoir, recalls how he met his future wife Usha Vance in college and became so “obsessed” with her that he told his friends that he would either “marry this girl” or remain a “lifelong bachelor”.

In his new religious memoir Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, excerpts of which were published by USA Today

, Vance recalls that he was drawn towards Usha due to her beauty, intelligence, and her complete disinterest in traditional markers of success.

Vance, who met Usha Bala Chilukuri at Yale Law School, says that she was the only person he’d felt real passion for.

“I will marry this girl,” I told my friends. “Or I will be a lifelong bachelor,” Vance writes, describing Usha as a combination of every genetic gift a person would want to have – beauty, intelligence, height.

“But there was something more: She was intense. I was drawn to her unlike I had ever been drawn to anyone,” he writes in the book that will be released next month.

“There were many things that I thought were unusual about Usha when I first met her. One is that she was intensely competitive, but I saw this as more bizarre than attractive,” Vance writes.

“She was incapable of jealousy, something I assumed came from a supreme inner confidence. But when I asked her – she was more capable than any person I had ever met – what she wanted to do, I was shocked at how uninterested she was in traditional markers of success,” the vice president writes.

Usha’s outlook on success left a lasting impact on Vance

Vance married Usha in 2014 and the couple is expecting their fourth child in July.

Vance recalls Usha having told her that her dream job was to run the Sesame Workshop because she loved kids and the idea of making educational programming that appealed to them.

“At Yale Law School, every person thinks they’re eventually going to run the world. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a person who thought they’d eventually become a Supreme Court Justice or US senator. But Usha, more capable than any of them, couldn’t have cared less about any of that,” he writes.

Vice president reflects on faith and personal journey

The vice president recalls having told Usha about the mismatch.

“You have the biggest mismatch between ambition and ability of any person I’ve ever met. You could be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and you have no interest in it,” Vance says in the book.

“That complete indifference to what other people wanted to do – or wanted her to do – was just another in a long list of magnetic personality traits,” the vice president writes.

Vance has said he evolved from Christianity to atheism to Catholicism. He converted in 2019 and credits his new faith with giving him a sense of purpose he didn’t get through his education at Yale University or working in the financial industry.

Vance’s first book Hillbilly Elegy, chronicling his childhood plagued by abuse, alcoholism and poverty, was a runaway success and also adapted into a movie.

Published on May 13, 2026