Usha Vance is a 'spirit guide' to husband JD and has evolved with him on Trump.

JD Vance's criticisms of professional women – as childless cat ladies or “miserable” women who prioritize career over children – might suggest his own spouse would be a model traditional housewife.

Instead, Usha Vance is a model high-achieving child of Indian immigrants.

Just ask her childhood music teacher, Rose Muralikrishnan, with whom she began taking classical South Indian singing lessons around the age of 6.

Muralikrishnan, a California-based musician, brims with pride at the achievements of her “brilliant” one-time student, who is now in the national political limelight.

“I was like, ‘That’s my little girl!,” Muralikrishnan says of her reaction when she saw Vance take the stage at the Republican National Convention in July to introduce her husband. “I immediately messaged her mom.”

Usha Vance was one of the top students at Yale Law School (according to classmates) where she met her future husband, JD, now the junior senator from Ohio and Donald Trump's running mate. She held prestigious clerkships and worked as a corporate litigator for a white-shoe firm until July.

She is heavily involved in helping him prepare for Tuesday night's debate against Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz, according to campaign officials, just as she had weighed in on his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

Tuesday's details: What are the rules for 'CBS News Vice Presidential Debate' between Vance, Walz? See full list

Born Usha Chilukuri to Hindu Indian immigrants, the 38-year-old was born and raised in San Diego. The family had close ties to a tight-knit group of Indian professionals, many of whom, including her parents, were college professors.

Her mother, Lakshmi Chilukuri, is a provost at the University of San Diego and her father, an engineer, is a lecturer at San Diego State University. Her great aunt is the oldest professor in India, still teaching college physics at age 96.

But Usha Vance is also a bit of an enigma to those who have followed her evolution from registered Democrat to reportedly believing Trump was responsible for inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, to now potentially becoming the second lady.

Her husband has made a similar evolution from someone who was more fun-loving than political to a “never Trumper” to now his running mate.

In conversations with the couple’s close friends and advisers and JD Vance’s own memoir, it becomes clear that he has leaned heavily on his wife over the past decade-and-a-half, both professionally and personally, and that the couple has been lockstep as their thinking and ideologies have evolved.

In his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance describes his wife as his “spirit guide” who bailed him out at a fancy dinner by secretly advising him on the right cutlery to use and reminded him that “every perceived slight is not cause for a blood feud.”

Law school and political evolution

Charles Tyler, a classmate from Yale, said he was not surprised the two hit it off.  While JD was more outgoing and Usha more studious and bookish, both were thoughtful and warm.

In his memoir, JD Vance describes his future wife, whom he met when they were assigned as partners for their first major writing assignment: "She seemed some sort of genetic anomaly, a combination of every positive quality a human being should have: bright, hardworking, tall, and beautiful."

Tyler said her thoughtfulness stood out.

“If she (Usha) knew that some sort of major life event had just happened to you, and you're likely to not have a lot of bandwidth, she's the sort of person who would come bring food, or would volunteer to walk your dog,” he said.

James Eimers, another classmate from that time, wrote in an email that despite a heavy academic load, Usha Vance maintained a "keen awareness of the happenings in the personal lives of her friends."

During their first round of employer interviews, Vance asked if he could borrow one of Eimers' ties.

"He ended up choosing a purple one ? one of my favorites," he wrote. "I recall that he ended up inadvertently absconding with that tie for several weeks until Usha gently reminded him about it when she became aware that I again needed it. "

The temporarily kidnapped tie become a running joke between them over the next three years of school, he wrote.

During their time at law school, JD Vance was “identifiably conservative,” but Usha Vance never expressed very strong viewpoints about political topics in his presence, according to Tyler.

Vance's memoir takes his readers through his childhood in a working-class neighborhood in Middletown, Ohio, where he barely knew his father, his mother struggled heavily with addiction, and he was raised by his grandparents who had their own marital struggles.

“He had this sort of revolving cast of stepfathers, the sorts of things that are real impediments to people's success in this world,” said Tyler.  “I had no idea he’d overcome any of that.”

After law school, Usha Vance, who was a registered Democrat until 2014, clerked for conservative judges including US Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge.

'No daylight' between them

Jai Chabria, a family friend and a political consultant, said Usha Vance has great instincts and the couple are “a team in every sense of the word.”

He said she was a "wonderful advisor" who was involved in his debate prep, helping shape his answers.

"When he goes out and makes a great speech, she advises him and, and gives him her opinion, and it's taken seriously,” he said.

Asked what she thinks of some of his more controversial statements and his earlier criticism and now embrace of Trump, he said they “don’t do major things without consulting each other.”

"There was a time when he actually didn't believe that Donald Trump was going to be a good president," he said, blaming the media's portrayal of the former president having influenced his thinking. "And then he realized that he was actually a great president, someone that actually, delivered and people's lives were better."

On his wife's support of Trump, he said:

“There is no daylight between the two of them on the politics of the day."

In an interview with Fox, Vance said that before her husband announced his Senate candidacy in 2021, they had a lot of serious conversations.

“We do have three children and giving them a stable, normal, happy life and upbringing is something that is the most important thing to us,” she said.

Asked about her reaction to her husband’s comment about the government being run by a “bunch of childless cat ladies,” she defended her husband in the Fox interview.

She said she wished people would spend less time going through “this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.”

"Because what he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country," she said. "And sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder."

Republican National Convention

As she took the stage at the Republican National Convention, Usha Vance had a no-nonsense style ? eschewing the glossy make-up and high definition-friendly look. She was wearing a simple blue dress and had visible strands of grey peeking through her shoulder-length hair.

She described her husband as a “working-class guy who had overcome childhood traumas” that she could “barely fathom.”

“When JD met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm. He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.”

She called their union a testament to “this great country.”

“Although he’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food from my mother, Indian food,” she said.

For Muralikrishnan, the music teacher, the moment was thrilling.

“I couldn’t believe where she was standing,” she said, “Right now, she is making all of us so proud.”

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Usha Vance is in lockstep with her husband on political views