Jill Biden, teacher who avoids 'Washington scene'

By Sue Pleming

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (Reuters) - For three decades, Jill Biden has avoided being part of what she calls the "Washington scene" but that may be harder after Tuesday if Barack Obama wins and her husband becomes vice president.

Jill Biden has a low media profile outside Delaware, where her husband, Joe Biden, has been a senator since 1972 and where she is involved in various health and education charities.

She is superstitious about predicting what kind of a role she might play as wife of the vice president if Obama wins and is not even sure whether she would give up her job at a community college in Delaware where she teaches English.

"I don't want to jinx it," she said in an interview with Reuters. "I think I would continue to do what I have always done, win or lose. I am an educator."

When her husband became Obama's running mate in August, Jill Biden, 57, stuck to her schedule of teaching and joins her husband only on weekends to campaign.

Between stops, she grades papers on the bus as it rolls through battleground states and prepares for the "Jill and Joe show" when she introduces him at rallies.

Elegantly dressed and slim -- she runs five miles many days -- Jill Biden has an easy presence on stage. Her husband calls her "drop dead gorgeous" and jokingly says he "married up."

"Joe Biden is a man who loves his country, his family and gets things done," she always tells supporters at rallies."

A hush falls over the crowd when she recalls how Biden lost his first wife, Neilia, and their baby daughter in a car accident in 1972, soon after he won his U.S. Senate seat.

He nearly gave up his political career to care for his sons, who were injured in the crash, but Sen. Ted Kennedy and others convinced him to take up his seat, she says.

"He said Delaware could get another senator but his sons could not get another father."

When she met him, he was taking a train daily to Washington and returning home so he could be with his children when they woke up and went to bed. He still makes that commute and they have never moved to Washington.

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She said Biden asked her five times before she agreed to marry him.

"He had two sons. I had grown up with four sisters. It was everything -- Joe's career, the state of Delaware, it was a little intimidating," she said.