Meet Casey DeSantis: Ron DeSantis' wife is a mom of 3, a former talk show host, and a breast cancer survivor

Casey is poised to take a prominent role in her husband's 2024 presidential race, having already joined DeSantis for "fireside chats" in key states. On May 30, she's expected to rally alongside her husband as he holds his first presidential campaign event in Iowa.

Together, the couple will be stopping at all 99 counties in Iowa, DeSantis said soon after he launched his 2024 campaign.

In particular, Casey will be appealing to suburban women voters — especially moms. Winning over this demographic is crucial for DeSantis as he heads into the campaign against former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner in the contest.

Before becoming Florida's first lady, Casey, now 42, worked as a news anchor for WJXT, Channel 4, in Jacksonville, covering crime and public safety, and hosted "On the Tee" and "PGA Tour Today" on the Golf Channel.

She most recently worked at First Coast News, where she produced an all-female roundtable show called "The Chat" and hosted the talk show "First Coast Living." She left the network in 2018 during DeSantis' campaign for governor.

Casey has helped DeSantis refine his public image, teaching him how to contour his face for TV and make his messages camera-ready.

DeSantis and Casey — whose maiden name is Black — met at a golf range at the University of North Florida. She was practicing her swing and kept looking behind her at a bucket of golf balls someone had left behind. Ron thought she was checking him out, and asked her on a date.

They tied the knot at Walt Disney World in 2009. The choice would later prove to be ironic given the battle between the governor and the mega corporation. The couple exchanged vows at the Grand Floridian's wedding pavilion, a chapel overlooking Cinderella Castle and the Seven Seas Lagoon.

Madison, 6, was born in November 2016. She appeared in a 2018 campaign ad highlighting Trump's endorsement of DeSantis for governor of Florida.

Their son, Mason, 5, was baptized at the governor's mansion after DeSantis' inauguration in 2019.

Mamie, 3, was born while DeSantis was in office, making her the first baby to live in the Florida governor's mansion in more than 50 years.

Casey has publicly shared anecdotes about raising three small children in the governor's mansion, recounting how her kids have colored on the walls of the state dining room and sang into the security guards' microphones before dawn.

Casey's father, Robert Black, was an ophthalmologist, and her mother, Jeanne, helped run his practice and was a speech pathologist. Casey goes by her middle name; her first name is Jill.

Her older sister, Kate, was a figure-skating prodigy, winning the US Figure Skating Association's novice dance couples championship at 13.

In high school, Casey was a member of the homecoming court, active in track, basketball and student government.

Kate enlisted in the Air Force, and Casey enrolled at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where she majored in economics, minored in French, and competed on the equestrian team. She briefly interned at Merrill Lynch before going into journalism.

In October 2021, DeSantis announced that Casey had been diagnosed with breast cancer. He wrote about watching her undergo the "miserable experience" of chemotherapy treatments in his memoir, "The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival."

In March 2022, DeSantis shared a video announcing that after treatment and surgery, Casey had been declared cancer-free.

Casey appeared in an emotional ad for DeSantis' 2022 reelection campaign sharing how her husband cared for her and her family while she was sick.

"When I was diagnosed with cancer and I was facing the battle for my life, he was the dad who took care of my children when I couldn't," she said in the ad. "He was there to pick me off of the ground when I literally could not stand. He was there to fight for me when I didn't have the strength to fight for myself."

The ad — as well as Casey's efforts to mobilize 1.1 million moms and grandmothers to support her husband — worked. DeSantis won female voters by 9% over his Democratic challenger, former US Rep. Charlie Crist.

In response to media criticism about her perfectly-styled hair, Casey told The New York Post in May: "I don't let it get to me. I'm lucky to even have hair."

As Florida's first lady, Casey's initiatives included childhood emotional resiliency, child welfare, and — as a breast-cancer survivor herself — cancer research.

She even spoke alongside her husband during Hurricane Ian recovery efforts.

When DeSantis became governor in 2019, she took the unusual step of setting up her office close to her husband's.

"I didn't want to be that proverbial potted plant," Casey said recently at one of her husband's book-tour stops, invoking one of DeSantis' go-to criticisms about Republicans he viewed as ineffective.

Casey is viewed as more politically savvy and likeable than her husband, someone instrumental to his electoral success, Insider previously reported.

Together, they're known to be careful about whom to trust. She both softens his image and hardens his positions, echoing his message through her own voice at events and on social media.

Reflecting on her husband's successful 2022 reelection campaign before an audience in Spartansburg, South Carolina, Casey said women voters were "fired up" about "parental rights in education," a term coined by conservatives to refer to controversial state restrictions in public schools on how LGBTQ topics and racial relations are taught.

"They did not want woke ideology shoved down the throats of their five years olds while they were in school," Casey said. "They said full stop that they didn't want it. So they were very proud that the governor was standing up for that."

For her husband's first gubernatorial inauguration in 2019, Casey wore a light-blue Ted Baker coat with a draped collar similar to the Ralph Lauren look that Melania Trump wore to former President Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017.

Casey attended DeSantis' 2022 swearing-in ceremony wearing a mint-green Alex Perry cape dress that retails for $2,600 with white gloves and silver earrings. Her outfit appeared similar to the ensemble that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wore to her daughter Caroline's wedding in 1986: a mint-green long-sleeved dress with white gloves, silver jewelry, and a cream clutch.

Casey appeared to channel Kennedy Onassis' style again in March when she wore a hot pink satin gown with white gloves, similar to a Dior outfit that the former first lady wore to a White House dinner in 1962.

At the end of April, Casey accompanied her husband on an international trade mission. Tabloids swooned over her glamour and fashion.

But other outlets, such as Jezebel, have been unimpressed with her outfits in the past, accusing her of cosplaying as FLOTUS and carrying "the glow of weaponized white female grievance."

Casey seems to represent a triad of first-lady models that have appeared throughout history: embracing the role of hostess and mother, that of adviser, and also being a political player in her own right, Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian, told Insider.

"What was most obvious to me is how very closely in tune they are to one another," she said of the DeSantises. "It's very clear that she's his closest adviser and they're very much in lockstep. Whether that works for a national campaign, I don't know. But I think as a dynamic it's very much on display."