Before Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was tapped to be Vice President Harris\u2019s running mate, the 60-year-old Midwestern Democrat was a high school teacher and football coach. Walz\u2019s time as an educator was formative not just to his political career but also his personal life: While teaching in rural Nebraska, Walz met his wife, Gwen.<\/p>\n
Praising his wife of 30 years, Walz has said of Gwen: \u201cMy wife can plan and get anything done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what to know about Gwen Walz:<\/p>\n
Tim Walz came to Minnesota thanks to his wife, who is a native of the North Star State.<\/p>\n
The pair met in Tim\u2019s home state of Nebraska when they were fellow teachers at Alliance High School \u2014 Gwen taught English, while Tim taught social studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cTim and I even shared a classroom, with a divider right down the middle,\u201d Gwen told Minnesota Public Radio in 2019. \u201cIn Minnesota, we taught at the same school.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 2019 article by the Minneapolis Star Tribune described Gwen overhearing how engaged her future husband\u2019s students sounded with his lessons. The couple\u2019s first date was to see the 1993 Michael Douglas dark dramedy \u201cFalling Down,\u201d followed by a meal at Hardee\u2019s, according to the Star-Tribune.<\/p>\n
The couple married in June 1994 and spent their honeymoon in China \u2014 on an educational trip they had arranged for students.<\/p>\n
Gwen, a graduate of the Lutheran-affiliated Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., and Minnesota State University at Mankato, persuaded her husband to move to her home state two years after they married. The couple both taught at Mankato West High School, where Tim also coached football. Gwen later became an administrator with Mankato Area Public Schools until 2019, when Tim became governor.<\/p>\n
As a teacher, Gwen has worked in public, alternative and migrant schools, according to her biography from the Minnesota Governor\u2019s Office. Her education advocacy has often dovetailed with her work on prison reform.<\/p>\n
As first lady of Minnesota, Gwen supported restoring the voting rights of convicted felons who have completed their prison terms and expanding educational opportunities for people who are incarcerated. Among the prison education groups Gwen backed as first lady is the Bard Prison Initiative, which provides a college education to prisoners in New York\u2019s penitentiary system.<\/p>\n
Gwen has said her interest in prison reform comes from her belief in education as a \u201ctransformational piece\u201d for individuals, according to Minnesota Public Radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has worked across the country to bring educational opportunities to incarcerated women and men, or as Gwen notes: students,\u201d her Minnesota Governor\u2019s Office bio reads. \u201cGwen understands that corrections must be an inclusive component of our education system, and by expanding opportunity, our state can dramatically reduce recidivism rates and most importantly, transform lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Tim Walz came to the governor\u2019s office in 2019, the unofficial role of Minnesota\u2019s first lady had been unfilled for eight years, as Walz\u2019s predecessor Mark Dayton was not married. When Gwen stepped into the role, she also remade it, becoming the first Minnesota first lady to keep an office in the Capitol.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always worked really closely together,\u201d Gwen told Minnesota Public Radio in 2019. \u201cTim said, \u2018Maybe you want to have a desk here, and come and go out of my office.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gwen said her husband \u201ctalks too much,\u201d and she opted to set up her office down the hall from his.<\/p>\n
The Star-Tribune reported that Gwen sat in on the hiring interview for the new commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections. She has also been outspoken on gun-control measures pushed by her husband\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
In 2019, Gwen was among those who rallied at Minnesota\u2019s Capitol to pressure the Republican-controlled state Senate to pass measures to expand background checks and adopt a red-flag law, according to the Star-Tribune.<\/p>\n
Gwen threatened that holdouts would face consequences at the ballot box.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they do not put it up for a vote, there are seven senators sitting in seats where Tim Walz won \u2014 and we are coming,\u201d Gwen Walz said.<\/p>\n
The Walzes are parents to Hope, 23, and Gus, 17.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Tim Walz revealed that the couple went through IVF treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., showing his support for the procedure after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling threatened to limit access to IVF in a decision that pushed fertility treatment more broadly into the national debate.<\/p>\n
In September 2019, the family held a news conference to introduce its newest member: Scout, a then 3-month-old black Lab mix who was a rescue dog. The governor\u2019s office released the news with the playful announcement that \u201cafter a months-long search, Governor Walz delivers campaign promise to his son.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like other politicians vying for office, Tim Walz pledged to Gus that if Walz won the governorship, the family would adopt a puppy.<\/p>\n
On election night in 2018, then-12-year-old Gus reacted to the news of his father\u2019s victory by exclaiming, \u201cI get a dog!\u201d<\/p>\n
At Christmastime last year, the family added Honey, an orange and white rescue cat, after their previous cat, Afton, wandered away from home.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Before Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was tapped to be Vice President Harris\u2019s running mate, the 60-year-old Midwestern Democrat was a high school teacher and football coach. Walz\u2019s time as an educator was formative not just to his political career but also his personal life: While teaching in rural Nebraska, Walz met his wife, Gwen. Praising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}