Joe and Jill Biden Revealed How They’re Making Their Marriage Work in the White House

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden might be the first couple, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to work on their marriage. 

“We have to, I think, try a little harder to make time for one another,” Jill recently told Vogue during a joint interview with Joe. “Even the thing about having dinner together: Sometimes we eat on the balcony; last night we ate in the yellow oval, upstairs. It’s just part of the day that we set apart, and we still light the candles, still have the conversations, still put the phones away.”

Though they aren’t exactly in a “long-distance relationship,” their duties as POTUS and FLOTUS often keep them apart, and after decades of marriage, says President Biden, it feels weird not to see her every day. “I miss her,” he said. “I’m really proud of her. But it’s not like we can just go off like we used to. When we were living in Delaware and married, once a month we’d just go up to a local bed-and-breakfast by ourselves, to make sure we had a romantic time to just get away and hang out with each other.” 

“And the other thing is, she’s been traveling all over the country,” the president continued. “And doing major events for me…and for the country. And so I’ll find that I’m working on a hell of an important speech and I’m distracted. And then I may not be working on one and I want to go and hang out with her, and she’s working on an important speech! Or grading papers. We have to figure out a way—and I mean this sincerely—to be able to steal time for one another. I think that’s the deal.”

Dr. Jill Biden says splitting their time between D.C. and Delaware gives the couple “the best of both worlds”: “We have our home in Delaware; we have grandkids in Delaware. Finnegan and Maisy are at Penn. They say, ‘Nana, we hear you’re coming home; can we come down and have lunch?’ Then they clean out the refrigerator; they take bags full of food home. And then, in D.C., we have grandkids here—Naomi’s here. She just got her first job as a lawyer. So she comes over, and she’ll do movie night with us, or she’ll play tennis with her boyfriend. We have friends in both places. I guess our home base has sort of stretched from Delaware to Washington. It’s just bigger now.”