Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao.
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Senator Mitch McConnell and former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao are a GOP power couple.
Chao has starred in campaign ads defending McConnell’s record on women’s issues.
McConnell, 81, was hospitalized Wednesday night after falling at a hotel in Washington, DC.
Mitch McConnell, 81, is the US Senate minority leader and one of the oldest lawmakers in the Senate.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
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He grew up in Alabama and Kentucky and became a senator for Kentucky in 1985.
Elaine Chao, 69, served as the US secretary of transportation under former President Donald Trump.Elaine Chao.
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She previously served as US secretary of labor from 2001 to 2009. Chao moved to the US from Taiwan at age 8 and grew up in New York, according to ABC News.
McConnell and Chao met through a mutual friend, Stuart Bloch, in Washington, DC in the early 1990s.Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao in 2002.
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According to The New York Times, Bloch and McConnell met in the 1960s. Bloch was married to Julia Chang Bloch, who was a mentor of Chao’s.
Bloch invited McConnell to a candlelit dinner with Chao, and the couple hit it off right away.At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 17, 2016.
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“I don’t want to say that sparks flew,” Bloch told The New York Times in 2014, “because that’s not the way either of them is.”
They married on February 6, 1993, in a private ceremony in the chapel of the US Capitol.Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao pose before their marriage in the chapel of the US Capitol on February 6, 1993.
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They chose that wedding date for three reasons, according to The Washington Post: It’s Ronald Reagan’s birthday, it was just before Chao’s 40th birthday, and it was right before a one-week Senate recess.
McConnell was previously married and has three children from that relationship.Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao holding hands.
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McConnell’s first wife, Sherrill Redmon, went on to become a feminist scholar. The two divorced in 1980.
In 1998, the couple told The Washington Post how they divide household labor.At the Republican National Convention in New York on Sept.1, 2004.
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McConnell cooked once in a while and did the laundry; Chao was responsible for fixing things around the house, the Post reported.
Chao has often campaigned with her husband, becoming …read more
Source:: Business Insider