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| - A long-standing social media rumor claims that former U.S. first lady Jill Biden was a teenager working as a babysitter for former President Joe Biden's children when they started dating.
For instance, a December 2024 post on X (archived) stated, "Jill was and still is Joe Biden's babysitter." Similarly, in February 2025, one user asked, "Was that when she was babysitting for Joe's first wife?"
(X user @JonasNight12077)
Other posts explicitly claimed that Jill was a teenager when she met Joe. One X user wrote, "Remember when they said this was a conspiracy theory? That he met her in her 30's?! Yeah another one proven true. Joe Biden is a pedo. He was attracted to his 15 year old babysitter, Jill. Sick freak." Another post alleged that Jill Biden first met Joe Biden "when she was a teenage girl babysitting his children."
In short, the claim that Jill Biden was a teenage babysitter for Joe Biden's children when they started dating is false. The couple met in 1975, after the death of Joe Biden's first wife, when Jill was in her mid-20s.
We previously fact-checked this claim in 2021 when similar false rumors spread on social media.
How and when the Bidens 1st met
Jill Biden was born on June 3, 1951, and Joe Biden on Nov. 20, 1942, making them nearly nine years apart in age. Given this age difference, it would have been impossible for Joe Biden to be in his 30s while Jill was still a teenager.
According to the White House website, Jill Biden met then-Senator Joe Biden in 1975. They married in 1977. In a 2016 Vogue interview, Jill stated that when she met Joe, she was a college senior. This means she was in her mid-20s at the time, not a teenager.
A Delaware Morning News article from July 17, 1977, detailed the origins of their relationship, stating that Joe Biden's brother, Frank, set them up on a blind date:
Article from Jul 17, 1977 The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware)
In a 2013 CNN interview, when asked whether it was true that Joe Biden "set his eyes" on her after seeing a picture of her, Jill Biden recalled: "I had met him once before, and but we were in a crowd and it was at a fundraiser. So then I guess he saw my picture somewhere and he said 'oh, that's the kind of girl I'd like to date.' And I knew his brother, so his brother said 'oh, I know her.' Cause I was in collage at the time and his brother was there. So Frank called me and, or got my number, and Joe called me. He said 'this is Joe Biden' and 'would you like to go out?"
A 2020 campaign video titled "Get to Know Jill Biden" further corroborates this timeline. In it, Joe Biden recounts:
Joe Biden: My brother said, "There's this woman. You'll really like her, Joe." So I gave her a call. And she had a date that night.
Jill Biden: You said "Do you think you could break your date?"
Joe Biden: Oh, that's right. What did you do?
Jill Biden: "Well, I called and told the guy that I had a friend in from out of town and went out with Joe.
Joe Biden: I was 30. I was a senator. And I was a widower. Several years earlier, a tractor-trailer broadsided my wife and three children. My wife and daughter were killed. I wasn't big on the whole dating scene. But when I met Jill, I fell in love with her when I saw her.
Origins of the photograph
Some posts featuring the claim included a photograph that supposedly shows Jill Biden at age 15. While the image is authentic, its use in this context is misleading. Jill Biden originally posted this photograph on her Instagram and X account in August 2020, stating it was taken after she met Joe Biden in 1975, when she was in her 20s.
"Those were the first words I spoke to Joe when he called me out of the blue on a Saturday in 1975," Jill Wrote.
The Philadelphia Inquirer also published the photo with a caption credited to the Biden campaign, dating it to 1976. At the time, Jill would have been about 24, and Joe about 33. Joe Biden's first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, had died in a car crash three years earlier.
Other rumors about Jill Biden that we have fact-checked in the past include the claim that she is not a medical doctor and is therefore wrongly using the title "Dr." and a rumor that she did not agree to marry Joe Biden until his fifth proposal.
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