What We Know About Mitch McConnell's First Wife, Sherrill Redmon

Senator Mitch McConnell announced his planned retirement at the end of the year on February 28, 2024, and we don't doubt that the farewell speeches will include many thanks to his supporters, colleagues, and second wife, Elaine Chao. However, one name you likely won't hear is McConnell's lesser-known first wife, Sherrill Redmon.

McConnell and Redmon were a quintessential "opposites attract" couple, politically speaking. The couple married in their 20s in 1968 and had three children together: Elly, Claire, and the liberal activist Porter McConnell. McConnell and Redmon's marriage lasted just over a decade before they divorced in 1980, a split that would mark the start of a long divergence from one another.

While the Kentucky congressman would go on to become one of the most prominent conservative leaders of his time, his first wife and mother of his three daughters would follow a much different path. Looking at both McConnell and Redmon's careers following their divorce, it's hard to believe there was ever a time when they saw eye to eye.

Mitch McConnell and Sherrill Redmon were still a young couple when McConnell got his first big break and was elected to the office of Jefferson County Executive Judge in 1977. Redmon spoke briefly about this time at the University of Houston in 2017 during an interview for the "National Women's Conference: Taking 1977 into the 21st Century." Redmon explained that as her husband diligently campaigned for the county judge seat for 10 months straight, she cared for their home and children.

Additionally, Redmon worked briefly as an adjunct professor but found the workload too overwhelming and the pay too scant. She moved on to archival work, working at the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center as a grad assistant while she finished her Ph.D. in American history. Author Patti Liszkay, who also worked at the archives center with Redmon in the late 70s, described her colleague in a blog post, writing, "Sherrill was a sincere, intense, and purpose-driven person. But at the same time, she was very sweet, kind, and maternal."

Although Redmon would later call her support of McConnell "ironic" during her University of Houston interview, Liszkay remembered her coworker being supportive of her then-husband, telling Liszkay how happy she was that McConnell finally got the boost to his career that he had been pursuing for all those years.

After Mitch McConnell and Sherrill Redmon divorced, Redmon moved to Massachusetts. Equipped with an undergrad degree from the University of Louisville, a Doctor of Philosophy in History from the University of Kentucky, and a love of archival work spurred by her time at the Kentucky Archives and Records Center, Redmon landed a job as the director of the Sophia Smith Collection of the Women's History Archives at Smith College in Northampton. 

While working at the small liberal arts women's college, Redmon also collaborated with feminist icon and journalist Gloria Steinem on an oral history project called Voices of Feminism. Redmon's devotion to gender and racial equality seemed to be a stark contrast to her ex-husband's political career which skewed more and more conservative, pushing ideology and law that would disenfranchise these minority groups. Perhaps this is why Redmon never spoke much about her former life in Kentucky.

"Despite Sherrill's devotion to recording all of women's lives, she didn't talk about the earlier part of her own," Steinem wrote in a 2020 email published by The New Yorker. "I can only imagine how painful it must be to marry and have children with a democratic Jekyll and see him turn into a corrupt and authoritarian Hyde." Painful, perhaps — but Redmon's life and career are both testaments to her fortitude and ability to uphold her beliefs and morals with or without Mitch, and that's certainly something to be happy about.