The former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations has a strong family backing her, too. Here is what you need to know about her support squad.

Nikki Haley has immigrant parents

Born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, Haley, 52, has three siblings: brothers Mitti and Charan and sister Simran. Her parents are immigrants from India and the family was raised in the Sikh faith.

Haley’s mother Raj Kaur Randhawa studied law at the University of Delhi. Per Business Insider, when the family moved to South Carolina, Raj got a master’s degree in teaching and worked at the Bamberg private schools for seven years.

Meanwhile, her father Ajit Singh Randhawa has a doctorate from Vancouver’s University of British Columbia, Canada and worked as a biology professor at Voorhees College, South Carolina in the US. He taught for 29 years before retiring in 1998.

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According to Business Insider, her parents also ran a foreign-goods store in Bamberg that extended into a clothing boutique, Exotica International. When the couple retired in 2008, the store closed.

Ajit is currently suffering from cancer, per USA Today, and Haley briefly left her campaign trail to visit him in hospital in January.

Per The New York Times, Haley said she was baptised at St Andrew by-the-Sea, Hilton Head, South Carolina before she got married in 1996. For her wedding to Michael Haley, there were two ceremonies – one Sikh and one Christian.

She’s married to Michael Haley

Nikki met Michael when they were both in university. Per People magazine, a mutual friend introduced the couple and they became fast friends. At the time, Michael was dating someone else so Nikki didn’t pursue him. Soon after Nikki heard that they had split, Michael said he wanted to date her … and someone else at the same time. Nikki said she told him she doesn’t “date people who also date other people”.

In her autobiography Can’t is Not an Option: My American Story, Haley wrote that he didn’t end up dating anyone else and they were inseparable after that moment.

Michael Haley’s adoption story

In her book, Nikki also confirmed that Michael was adopted as a child. She wrote that his biological father was an alcoholic and he grew up in a home that didn’t have electricity or running water. The children were placed in foster care. His mother apparently tried to regain custody of her five children, but a car accident left her with a brain injury that resulted in her being unable to care for them. Michael and one of his sisters, Lee Anne, were adopted by Bill and Carol Haley.

Nikki explained that his story influenced her anti-abortion stance, saying, “I’m pro-life because I get a chance to spend every day with the love of my life knowing that I am blessed that someone saved his life.”

The Haleys’ political associations

Nikki has not been shy to promote her husband’s role as a member of the South Carolina Army National Guard. In a political campaign launched last year, she spoke about how her husband battled to adapt to normal life after returning from Afghanistan.

Per Business Insider, Michael is a major and was deployed for the first time in 2012 while Nikki was South Carolina governor. He was deployed again in 2023 to Djibouti, Africa, which means he has been away for much of Nikki’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

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“I can’t help but to think giving one year along with my fellow soldiers, as many have done before me, to secure a life of freedom for my family is well worth all that comes with it,” Michael told The Augusta Chronicle about his Afghanistan deployment.

However, Trump has lambasted the army major for not being by his wife’s side during her campaign, but Nikki responded strongly on X (formerly Twitter) with, “Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about.”

The Haley kids

Nikki and Michael’s son Nalin was born in 2001. He enrolled at Villanova University in Pennsylvania in 2020 as a political science major. He said in an interview in the campus magazine The Villanovan that he would have still gone in that direction, even if his mother was not a politician.