With 47th POTUS Donald Trump almost back at the helm of America, one of the more notable additions to his cabinet includes Indian-American biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. As the second head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), alongside the world’s richest man and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, Ramaswamy has been making headlines for his anti-woke, bold political stance. But despite his growing political prominence, there’s little known about the family life of the Cincinnati-born entrepreneur. In an old video that has since resurfaced, the 39-year-old shared an amusing anecdote about how he met his wife Apoorva T. Ramaswamy for the first time, recalling how he walked away from her during their first conversation due to a silly misunderstanding.
The video was posted on Instagram with the caption, “How I met my wife Apoorva. What’s your ‘how’d you meet’ story?” In the clip, Vivek recounts the encounter: “It’s a funny story, actually. So, we were both in grad school. I was in law school — it was my second year. She was in med school; she’d just started — first week of classes. We met through a mutual friend, and it turns out he was hosting a house party. We met there, and she came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Apoorva. What’s your name?’ I thought, Oh my god, this beautiful girl has come right up to me, talking to me directly! So, I said, ‘Hey, I’ll tell you my name — I’m Vivek.’ And she said, ‘Oh, actually, I just met another Vivek.’
“Apparently, I didn’t like that very much, so I turned around and walked away. I guess I wanted to be unique or something. But then we saw each other again at a grad school bar later that night, and I thought, ‘That was the beautiful girl who came up to me earlier. I want to talk to her.’ I was interested; she had a spirit about her, a certain energy that struck me. So, I struck up a conversation, and we started talking about where we grew up. She had gone to high school in New York, but we had both grown up in the Midwest. I think I even teased her a bit about her New York upbringing. We discovered that we lived in the same apartment building, right across the street from a famous vegetarian restaurant in New Haven. We had our first date there later on, and the rest is history,” he continued.
In another video, Vivek expands on his personal beliefs, touching on family values and his upbringing. He shares how his parents taught him that “who you marry matters” and that they would pass the same lessons on to their own children. “Neither of us grew up with economic privilege,” Ramaswamy explains. “We didn’t grow up in poverty either, but we had the ultimate privilege of having two parents in the house, instilling in us a focus on education, the belief in God — and we are trying to give our two sons that same upbringing now in Ohio. But I see no reason why every kid in this country shouldn’t at least have a chance to enjoy that privilege too, and I think that’s part of the example we want to set as a family in the White House.”
Apoorva Ramaswamy aka Apoorva Tewari, is an assistant professor and surgeon based in Ohio, USA. She earned her MD from Yale University and specializes in treating swallowing and voice disorders, particularly in cancer survivors. The couple married in 2015 and have two kids together.