All About J. D. Vance's Sister Lindsay

J. D. Vance’s sister Lindsay is one of his biggest supporters. 

The United States senator from Ohio (who was announced as Donald Trump's vice presidential pick for the 2024 election) grew up with his older in Middletown, Ohio, where they had a tumultuous childhood.

As his father left when he was young and his mother dealt with drug addiction, Vance and his sister were primarily raised by his grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance, whom they called "Papaw and Mamaw." 

His upbringing in Middletown and his family dynamics greatly inspired his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which was later adapted into a film directed by Ron Howard in 2020.

Though Vance’s sister isn’t in the spotlight like him, she has spoken about her close bond with her brother through various interviews, telling Megyn Kelly in 2017, “I would die for that kid. And I know he would, too.”

Here’s everything to know about J. D. Vance’s sister Lindsay. 

During a Sunday Night segment on Vance, Megyn Kelly reported that Lindsay is five years older than Vance and was fiercely protective of him growing up. Amid their mother’s abuse, Megyn Kelly noted that Lindsay was a source of “comfort and protection” for Vance.

Following a harrowing car ride with his mother, in which she threatened to kill them both, Vance went to live with his grandmother, whom he refers to as “Mamaw.” 

During Lindsay's interview with Kelly, she recalled how she was incredibly emotional reading Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy as it brought back a lot of memories from their childhood.“I just laid in bed at night pulling apart and reading it and I would just cry,” she told Ke -

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lly.

“I just felt so sorry for those kids and why I didn’t see more of him," she added, reflecting on the years after she had moved out but he still lived with their grandparents. "I should have been able to do more.”

While Vance still lived with their grandparents, Lindsay, five years older, got married and began to have children; she now is a mother of three.

Lindsay has since expressed guilt over leaving Vance alone.

“We’ve talked a lot about that and I just don’t think that Lindsay should feel guilty at all about it,” Vance told Kelly on Sunday Night. “She had found her way and I was looking for my way out.” 

Following the release of Vance’s memoir in 2016, Lindsay defended her brother against online criticism. “The kid has never done wrong in my eyes. J.D. has a part of my soul that nobody will ever have and I’ll protect him until the day I die,” Lindsay told Dayton Daily News. “Whenever things were falling apart, my first thought was always him.”

Regarding the online criticism, she added, “You want to shout from the rooftops, ‘How dare you? Let me tell you about J.D.’ What makes him or makes him not a hillbilly? That’s something Mamaw used to say to describe her or her family … hill people or hillbillies. What the title of the book means is that he’s telling the story of his people. His hillbillies were Mamaw and Papaw.”

In addition to being a big sister to Vance, she is also an aunt to his three children. Vance and his wife Usha have two sons, Ewan, Vivek, and a daughter named Mirabel.

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