Jill & Joe Biden Look So Different In Throwback Snap From Their Younger Years

Joe Biden has served in the White House on two separate occasions; first as vice president to President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2017, and again as President of the United States from 2021 to 2025. Someone who's been by his side through it all is Joe's wife since 1977, Dr. Jill Biden, who's notably had a stunning transformation during that time. However, the couple reached their highest level of notoriety later in life, meaning there may be a good amount of people who haven't seen the Bidens in their younger years. And one throwback picture, in particular, offers a glimpse at a very different moment in time for them.

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We don't really do age-shaming here, but it's hard not to notice that both Joe and Jill have noticeably fewer wrinkles in the above photo . They also just have a more youthful aura about them in general, to say nothing of the former president's fuller head of hair. Now, at first glance, one may assume this image is from very early in Joe and Jill Biden's marriage, considering it's in black and white. 

In reality, the picture was taken during the Clinton administration. Photographer Kyle Samperton snapped the pic in February 1996, when the Bidens were attending a dinner for then-President of France Jacques Chirac at the White House. At the time, Joe was in the midst of his lengthy tenure representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate, while he and Jill were just under a year and a half away from celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary.

It's no secret that Jill and Joe Biden have had their fair share of personal tragedy over the years. Shortly before his Senate career began, in 1972, Joe experienced unimaginable heartbreak when his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and their daughter, Naomi Biden, were killed in a car wreck. The future president met Jill in early 1975 when she was in the midst of a messy divorce from her first husband. Happily, these two brokenhearted people were able to find new love with one another, and they ultimately wed two years later. But on the subject of change, that transition wasn't without its growing pains.

Jill was acutely aware of the fact that her life would never be the same after marrying the then-fresh-faced up-and-coming politician, which is why she was hesitant to actually tie the knot with him in the first place. "I knew that if I married Joe, I'd have to give up my apartment, the only space that was just for me," the soon-to-be first lady wrote in a 2019 TIME op-ed, elaborating, "I'd have to quit my job for the boys' sake [...] I'd have to become Jill Biden, senator's wife. It was all too much." 

The dedicated schoolteacher also struggled with the idea of replacing Beau and Hunter Biden's late mother, though she ultimately realized that the boys had already become like family to her over time regardless. So, after Joe had proposed on multiple occasions, Jill finally said yes to him. And with the beloved couple's time in the White House now over for good, the Bidens seem keen on spending their twilight years together.