The Bidens have been a fixture in American politics for decades, and now the family – which includes the president-elect’s wife Jill and his two surviving children, Hunter and Ashley – are set to serve as the next first family, after Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20, 2021. Of course, this means that they will be moving into America’s most-prestigious address together with their dogs, Champ and Major. The Biden family have faced their share of tragedy over the years: Biden has a daughter named Ashley with Jill, his second wife. But he had three children with his first wife, Neilia, only one of whom, his son Hunter, is still alive. Neilia and daughter Naomi died in a 1972 car crash, and their son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Read on to find out about each member of America’s new first family, how they got there and the troubles they endured along the way . President-elect Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942 and spent the first few years of his life in Scranton, Pennsylvania Biden was born to Joseph Biden Sr., a used-car salesman, and Catherine Eugenia Finnegan. Growing up, Biden struggled with a stutter but said he overcame the speech impediment by memorising and reciting poetry. He attended St. Helena School before going to the private Archmere Academy, from which he graduated in 1961. Biography.com reports that Biden developed a “sharp interest” in politics during his undergraduate years, in part inspired by watching the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Biden would be only the second Catholic to be elected president, after Kennedy, per Pew Research Center. Which celebrities voted for Joe Biden, and who stuck with Donald Trump? Biden met his first wife, Neilia Hunter, during his third year in college Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia Hunter. The way she looked at him pic.twitter.com/knKQeLJceH — M (@marlencha1992) October 18, 2020 Biden met his first wife, Neilia, while he was on a spring break trip and while Neilia was attending Syracuse University. Biden himself went on to attend Syracuse University Law School after graduating from the University of Delaware in 1965. In 1996, Biden and Neilia married and they had three children: Joseph “Beau” Biden III born in 1969, Hunter born in 1970, and Naomi born in 1971. After Biden graduated from law school in 1968, the family moved to Wilmington, Delaware. During this time, he started his own law firm and was elected to the New Castle County Council. Tragedy struck the Biden family in 1972, when his wife Neilia and their children were in a car accident a week before Christmas The car accident killed Neilia and their young daughter Naomi, while Beau and Hunter survived. Afterwards, Biden “began to understand how despair led people to just cash in; how suicide wasn't just an option but a rational option,” Biography.com quotes him as saying of the incident. “I felt God had played a horrible trick on me, and I was angry.” He had just been elected to the Senate and decided to skip the traditional swearing-in ceremony in Washington, instead taking the oath from the hospital where his sons were recovering. He began commuting from Wilmington each day, something he continued throughout his Senate tenure, earning the nickname “Amtrak Joe” for his preferred mode of transport. Melania vs Jill: who was best dressed at the final US presidential debate? Biden ran two previous unsuccessful campaigns for president before breaking through in 2020 After Biden’s first presidential run in 1988, doctors discovered that he had two brain aneurysms. He had to undergo surgery, which then led to complications that saw blood clots in his lungs. After another surgery, he went into a seven-month recovery and then returned to the Senate. Jill Biden was born in Hammonton, New Jersey, in June 1951 Jill Biden was born in Hammonton, New Jersey, in June 1951. Her father was a bank teller and her mother was a stay-at-home mum. She has four siblings. “From an early age, I knew I wanted my own money, my own identity, my own career,” she told Vogue in 2008. In 1971, she married a man named Bill Stevenson, whom she met soon before graduating from high school. She attended the University of Delaware, majoring in English, and she and Stevenson opened a bar named the Stone Balloon Tavern and Concert Hall, which would go on to become one of the top college bars in the nation. By 1975, she and Stevenson divorced. Then a third year in college, she decided to take a year off from school. Later that year, she went on a blind date with Biden, set up by his brother Frank. In 1977, Joe Biden married his second wife, Jill (née Jacobs) Jill said it took five marriage proposals for her to finally say yes to Biden. “By that time, of course, I had fallen in love with the boys, and I really felt that this marriage had to work. Because they had lost their mum, and I couldn't have them lose another mother,” Jill told Vogue . The two married in 1977. They have a daughter, Ashley, who was born in 1981. As Biden continued his political career, Jill earned a master’s in education, and then another master’s in English from Villanova University, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer . At the age of 55, she earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware. 5 (not so) strange things Millie Bobby Brown splurges on Jill was the first known second lady to have an outside job while in the role – and is set to be the first lady to do so During Biden’s vice presidency, Jill was an English teacher at Northern Virginia Community College – making her the first known second lady to work while in the role. Business Insider previously reported that many students didn’t even know she was married to Joe, as she went by the nickname “Dr. B”. “My standard line when students ask me if I am married to the VP is to say that I am one of his relatives. That usually quiets them,” she once told The New York Times . Once her husband is sworn in as president, Jill will become the first FLOTUS to have a full-time job outside the White House. Joe Biden‘s oldest son, Joseph (“Beau”) Biden III, was born in February 1969 Beau was born in Wilmington, Delaware. After the car crash that killed his mother and younger sister, he and his brother Hunter were hospitalised. He said at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 that the experience had made the family closer. “One of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our side. We, not the Senate, were all he cared about,” he said. Like his father, Beau attended Archmere Academy, then later graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He also attended Syracuse University College of Law. After law school, he worked at the Department of Justice in Philadelphia. He was elected Attorney General of Delaware in 2006, after having spent two years as a partner at the Wilmington law firm Bifferato, Gentilotti, Biden & Balick. Beau Biden served two terms as Delaware’s attorney general, and was going to try to run for governor of the state in 2016 Beau served two terms as Delaware’s attorney general, winning re-election to the position in 2010. In April 2014, he announced he would not seek a third term, and would instead run for governor of Delaware in 2016. “After careful consideration, I have concluded that it is not right to ask for your support in 2014, knowing that my focus would be divided between doing my job as attorney general while at the same time running as a candidate for governor,” Beau Biden said in a statement that was posted on his website, captured by the BBC at the time. Miley Cyrus, Samuel L. Jackson: 10 stars who quit veganism Beau Biden died from brain cancer in May 2015, at the age of 46 Before his cancer diagnosis, Beau had struggled with several health issues. In 2010, he had a stroke, and in 2013, he had a lesion removed from his brain. After Beau died of brain cancer in May 2015, Barack Obama delivered a eulogy at his funeral. “He did in 46 years what most of us couldn't do in 146. He left nothing in the tank. He was a man who led a life where the means were as important as the ends,” Obama said at the funeral. “Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known,” Biden said in a statement about his son. Beau’s death may have kept Biden from running for president in 2016. “As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I've said all along what I’ve said time and again to others, that it may very well be that the process by the time we get through it closes the window. I’ve concluded it has closed,” he said at the time. Hunter Biden was born in February 1970 in Wilmington, Delaware Hunter Biden was born in February 1970 in Wilmington. He went on to study at Georgetown, graduating in 1992. After his college graduation, he spent time in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps before heading to Yale Law School in 1996, where he got a JD. In 1997, he returned to Wilmington, where he lived with his wife and daughters. He became an executive vice-president at MBNA Bank and stayed at the bank for nearly five years, although he later said he didn't like its corporate culture. “If you forgot to wear your MBNA lapel pin, someone would stop you in the halls,” he told The New Yorker in 2019. At the time, MBNA was known to be a major donor to Joe Biden’s campaigns. From 2001 to 2008, Hunter worked at a federal lobbying firm that he co-founded, resigning when his father joined the presidential ticket. Hunter said he resigned from the lobbying firm to preserve the “optics” of his father’s ticket with Obama. “I wanted my father to have a clean slate,” Hunter told The New Yorker last year. “I didn’t want to limit him in any way.” In 2008, Hunter launched a consulting firm, and in 2009 co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners, a private-equity firm. Melania vs Jill: who was best dressed at the final US presidential debate? Hunter Biden’s personal life has garnered a lot of attention over the past decade At the age of 44, Hunter was discharged from the Navy Reserves for testing positive for cocaine, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014. (Hunter told The New Yorker in 2019 that he had been a frequent social drinker and occasionally used cocaine.) A few years later, in 2017, following the death of his brother Beau from cancer, Hunter separated from his wife, Kathleen, and began dating Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, the New York Post ’s Page Six reported. (Hunter and Kathleen later divorced.) It is unclear when Hunter and Hallie broke up, but TMZ reported on a “secret” wedding in May 2019 between Hunterand the South African model Melissa Cohen. Later that year, it was revealed that while Hunter had been dating Hallie, he fathered a child with another woman named Lunden Alexis Roberts, later confirmed by DNA testing, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. Throughout Joe Biden’s run for president, Hunter’s business career has generated headlines Hunter’s significant international business connections became a subplot of much of the latter half of Donald Trump’s term in office, as well as in his 2020 campaign. In May 2014, Hunter became a board member of Burisma Holdings, a gas company based in Ukraine. A press release said Hunter would be in charge of Burisma’s legal relations with different companies, but Hunter would later deny that characterisation. The Biden family said that his role did not pose a conflict of interest, while the Trump campaign claimed otherwise. Ultimately, Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s prosecutor general, said there was no evidence of wrongdoing against either Hunter or Joe. The Trump White House’s efforts to convince the government of Ukraine to publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens was part of Trump’s impeachment in late 2019 and early 2020. 10 celebrities who were homeless before they made it big Ashley Biden has lived a life further outside politics than her brothers Ashley Biden is Joe Biden’s only living daughter. As reported by Tatler , she received a master‘s in social work from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. She got married in 2012 to Howard Krein, an ear, nose, and throat doctor (otolaryngologist). Krein is Jewish, but according to Tatler , Ashley has not converted to Judaism and remains a practising Catholic. Biden and his family are known for being devout Catholics and Joe is frequently seen attending church near his home in Wilmington. But all of his children have married Jewish spouses, The Jewish Chronicle reported. Vice president-elect Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is also Jewish. Biden’s second run for president in 2007 ended after he received less than one per cent of the votes in the Iowa caucuses Joe Biden was still a senator when he tried to run for president in 2007. In that Democratic primary, he went up against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The latter candidate would end up securing the Democratic nomination and selecting Biden as his running mate. On November 2, 2008, Obama and Biden beat the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin. On January 20, 2009, Obama became the 44th US president and Biden became the 47th vice-president. Why does Kamala Harris love her Converse Chuck Taylors so much? In January 2017, President Obama awarded Biden the President Medal of Freedom with distinction, the nation’s highest civilian honour In 2017, Obama surprised Joe Biden before they left office by presenting him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour. Obama said in the ceremony that Biden was “the best vice-president America‘s ever had” and a “lion of American history”, adding that Biden was being honoured for “faith in your fellow Americans, for your love of country and a lifetime of service that will endure through the generations”. If you are having suicidal thoughts, or you know someone who is, help is available. For Hong Kong, dial +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans or +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on +1 800 273 8255. For a list of other nations’ helplines, see this page. Want more stories like this? Sign up here . Follow STYLE on Facebook , Instagram , YouTube and Twitter . This article originally appeared on Business Insider.