US presidential candidate Kamala Harris is stepmother of two: Know her family

US Vice President

Kamala

Harris

entered the 2024 presidential race after President

Joe Biden

ended his reelection campaign. She is the

stepmother

of two

children

from her marriage to Second Gentleman

Doug Emhoff

. When she was sworn in as vice president in 2021, Harris made history as the first stepmother to become America’s vice president.
Emhoff’s children, Cole, 30, and Ella, 25, call Harris "Momala." They describe a loving co-parenting relationship with their mother, Kerstin Emhoff, who attended the presidential inauguration in 2021 with her children.

"They are really a unit, like a three-person parenting squad. It’s really cool,"

Ella Emhoff

told the New York Times in 2021 about her mom, dad, and Harris.
Harris, who grew up with divorced parents herself, has described her two stepchildren as her "endless source of love and pure joy," as quoted by ABC news.
Cole Emhoff

works in entertainment, like his mother, while Ella Emhoff is a model and fashion designer. In a 2019 article in Elle, Harris described meeting the "brilliant, talented, funny" kids who grew up to be "remarkable" adults and how welcoming they were to her. She even credits them with encouraging her to marry their dad. In her Elle piece, Harris mentioned that Cole was named after American jazz musician John Coltrane, while Ella was named after American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald.

Ella was still in high school when Harris joined the family, and Harris wrote about cheering for her at swim meets and basketball games. Cole had already gone off to college. Ella graduated from the Parsons School of Design in New York City in May 2021, and Cole married Greenley Littlejohn in October 2023, with Harris officiating their wedding.
Doug Emhoff was working as a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer when he and Harris were set up on a blind date in 2013 by a friend of Harris. At the time, Harris was serving as California’s attorney general. The vice president wrote in her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, that the morning after their first date, Emhoff sent an email to set up future dates, writing, "I’m too old to play games or hide the ball ... I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work." Harris and Emhoff wed in 2014, her first marriage and his second.