For a substantial chunk of their twenty year marriage, Abigail and Adam Spanberger tried to be the least interesting people in the room. She was a CIA officer, stationed in various locales under the cover of a boring government job. He was her spouse: a software engineer and thoroughly normal dad. “It’s certainly a switch for me,” Spanberger recently said of his wife becoming the first female governor of Virginia. Instead of deflecting attention at events, he will now be hosting them. The public will know exactly who he is.
In its 337 years as a state, Virginia has never before had a first gentleman, so Spanberger is inventing the role. His plans seem fairly traditional: supporting his wife, adopting an issue portfolio that complements her agenda, and running point on their three school-aged kids. “I think as first gentleman, I’m going to try to be a cheerleader,” he says. “A cheerleader for my wife and a cheerleader for the state.” If his wife’s new job is to “uplift people, to make their lives a little bit easier,” then his job is to help make that possible.
Spanberger has actually done that for years. As his wife’s career advanced from the CIA to the private sector and then to Congress, he says he “did most of the grocery shopping and meal prep and getting kids to places.” And during her campaigns, he’s been an enthusiastic volunteer: building and maintaining his wife’s website, knocking on countless doors. Once, he says, someone dragged a deer carcass next to one of her campaign signs—creating a ghastly visual of vultures and decay—so he drove over and moved the remains. He was happy to do it. “Abigail works tirelessly to improve the lives of other people,” he says, “so the least I can do is help set up a website and things like that.”For Spanberger, the role of first spouse won’t be wholly new—at the very least, he’s used to being in rooms with few men. When his wife was a CIA officer, for instance, he attended a 250-person event for diplomatic spouses where all but four guests were women. (The men quickly found each other and had a lively chat about volcanoes.) And in 2019, when his wife was a new member of Congress, Spanberger attended a function for political spouses that was so female dominated that “most people thought I was Secret Service,” he told the Wall Street Journal. At the end, the spouses were each gifted a quilted Vera Bradley bag that held, among other things, a bracelet. “This is going to be so pretty on you,” his wife joked.
To prepare to be the first gentleman, Spanberger has consulted an array of Virginia’s former first ladies, including Suzanne Youngkin, Pamela Northam, and Dorothy McAuliffe. Anne Holton has been particularly helpful, as she twice inhabited Virginia’s executive mansion, first as the daughter of governor Linwood Holton and then as the wife of Tim Kaine. As for consulting men, there are simply fewer to draw from. Former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has apparently reached out, but as of late December, he and Spanberger hadn’t yet managed to connect. He does speak frequently with his friend Jason Hedberg, who’s married to New Jersey’s new governor, Mikie Sherrill. “We’re kind of going through this together,” Spanberger says. “We’re both working dads and husbands who are jumping into something new.”
At least for now, Spanberger plans to continue in his job as a software engineer—he works on devices that communicate with satellite systems—which he’ll do remotely from the executive mansion. And as first gentleman, his main area of policy focus will be kids. He hopes to build on the work that Dorothy McAuliffe and Pam Northam have done to keep Virginia’s children fed and educated, while making sure teachers are well-paid and that schools have enough counselors. He also says that, as an avid cyclist, he’d like to promote bike safety by encouraging cyclists to wear helmets and urging drivers to be careful when passing them on the road.
Spanberger hopes to set an example for Virginians, to show boys that in the Spanberger family, “you can date and marry a successful woman, and you can be successful as well, and you can share in each other’s success.” He hopes his marriage will be a model for his daughters, too: “We want to teach them that they should demand and expect love and respect from any future partner they have.” For now, though, his daughters are focused on the next four years: the middle Spanberger is particularly looking forward to using the kitchen at the executive mansion, where she hopes to stage TV-style baking competitions like Nailed It or Is It Cake? And the youngest is excited to have sleepovers there with her friends, which Anne Holton promised would be magical.
Asked what he himself is excited for, Spanberger is perfectly on-message, peak first gentleman: He’s looking forward to the “great opportunity to be an advocate and example for Virginia families,” he says, and to encouraging people to “come raise a family here, come invest in businesses here, come vacation here in Virginia.” He loves the state: “the beaches, the mountains, the rolling valleys, the four seasons.” Being its cheerleader is “going to be a fun four years.”
