Dr. Jill Biden has broken her silence on the daily reality of caring for her husband through his stage 4 cancer battle.
The former first lady, 75, spoke from the couple’s lake house in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 5, opening up about how their post-White House plans collapsed after Joe Biden, 83, announced in May 2025 that prostate cancer had metastasized to his bones. The diagnosis came just 118 days after he left office.
“Having been through a lot of highs and lows in our marriage, I think we are stronger than ever before,” Dr. Biden said, admitting: “I didn’t think that was possible.”
She called the diagnosis a “complete surprise” and revealed the couple had mapped out a retirement filled with international travel, including a trip to Italy. The new reality hit her during a quiet moment at a nail salon while flipping through a travel magazine.
“All of a sudden it struck me, like, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t our life now,'” she recalled. “Just putting the magazine down, [I] just had to kind of take a minute and realize with Joe having stage 4 prostate cancer that’s metastasized, that because of that metastasis, he will always have cancer. And it changes your life, it changes your perspective about life. So now we’re on a new journey.”
Dr. Biden described a daily routine now consumed by monitoring every detail of her husband’s health, layered on top of ordinary family responsibilities. She teaches literature part-time at a nearby women’s prison and receives some caregiving assistance.
“So many people have reached out to me, and in turn, I have reached out to them, because I have seen how hard it is, how really emotionally hard it is, physically hard to go through each day,” she shared. “My days are making sure he eats right. Does he exercise? Is he taking the right medicine? Did I talk to the doctor? I mean, that’s layered on top of family life or all the other things that any spouse or other member of the family does.”
Her experience has connected her with some of the estimated 63 million family caregivers across the United States.
The former president, who has completed radiation therapy and now undergoes hormone treatment, praised his wife’s strength ahead of their 50th wedding anniversary next June.
“I knew from the beginning what she was,” Biden told the publication. “Jill is, first of all, bright as hell. Secondly, I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, which every husband probably thinks, but I believe it. And we have a real partnership.”
Dr. Biden credited their children and grandchildren for keeping spirits lifted in a busy household where grandkids regularly drop by to check on “Pop” and stay the night.
Biden addresses his diagnosis in his upcoming presidential memoir, “Promise Me, America,” out November 17. He insisted he is determined to “fight like hell.”
“I’m not saying I’ll live forever,” he said. “But the point is that I have all my faculties, I have access to all the things I had before and I feel good.”
He forcefully rejected speculation that he concealed his illness while president. “A lot of people do that. They hide bad news from the public if they’re elected officials,” Biden said. “I didn’t do that. We let the public know when I found out, when I knew what was going on. I think it’s important for a national leader, as president, to let people know they go through some of the very same things that a lot of American people are going through… I wasn’t hiding it at all.”
Defending his initial decision to run for re-election in 2024 before stepping aside following his June debate against President Donald Trump, Biden acknowledged voters’ concerns about his age while maintaining his experience was an asset.
“People say I was deluding myself that I could do the job [of president] at my age,” he said. “My answer to that is: I was doing the job.”
Biden’s May 2025 announcement that he had stage 4 prostate cancer with bone metastasis transformed the couple’s post-presidency plans and thrust Dr. Biden into a caregiving role she had not anticipated so soon after leaving Washington.
“Promise Me, America” is scheduled for release on November 17.