Tragic Details About VP Pick Tim Walz & His Wife Gwen

Mere weeks after the former vice president and 46th president, Joe Biden, dropped out of the 2024 presidential race (a decision that was met with a scathing response from Donald Trump), Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was thrust into the spotlight when Vice President Kamala Harris chose him to be her running mate. Despite a long career in politics, Walz wasn't as widely known as some of the other rumored VP contenders, like Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly. However, that quickly changed following Harris' announcement.

The public had already learned plenty of strange things about JD Vance when he was announced as the Republican VP candidate, and the attention then turned to delving deep into his Democratic counterpart's past. In addition to honing in on various strange facts about Tim and wife Gwen Walz's marriage, it was discovered, among other things, that one of Walz's brothers supports rival candidate and 45th president Donald Trump, and that the governor and his wife have experienced a number of dark moments in their lives. Here are the tragic details about Tim Walz and his wife Gwen.

Tim Walz grew up in rural Nebraska, regularly moving counties as his father pursued a career as a school superintendent. In 1969, the family moved to the tiny town of Valentine (its population was just over 2,600 as of 2022) where, for the next decade, Walz enjoyed a peaceful upbringing playing football, basketball, and golf.

However, his calm life was turned upside down in 1979 when the family was forced to move to the even smaller town of Butte, population a few hundred. Walz's father had terminal lung cancer and his mother wanted to be close to her relatives for assistance. Speaking with Kamala Harris in 2024, Walz explained about his father, "He was a chain smoker, just addicted." Walz was just 15 at the time of the diagnosis, and his new reality weighed heavily on him. Michael Bartlett, who grew up with Walz, told The Washington Post, "Knowing his dad is terminal, it changes your perspective on lots of things; it forces your hand to grow up a little bit."

Indeed, Walz joined the army the moment he turned 17 and the GI Bill gave him the means to enroll at Chadron State College in Nebraska. But when his 54-year-old father died in 1984, a 19-year-old Walz was "ripped up." Unsure how to proceed, he dropped out of school and got a factory job instead. Eventually, Walz returned to university, but was forever changed. "It shaped me later in life and certainly shaped me as it deals with health care," Walz mused.

Watching his father suffer affected Tim Walz on an emotional level, but it also greatly impacted the family financially. Once they moved to Butte, Nebraska, they had limited access to healthcare and were forced to regularly travel over 230 miles to Omaha for dad James Walz to get treatment. The medical costs piled up over the next five years, reaching a breaking point in the final week when his father fell into a coma.

Tim explained to The Washington Post that those last few days in hospital "cost my mom a decade of having to go back to work." His mother, who was then in her 60s, was forced to get a job at a nursing home because, as he told the Veterans History Project, "There was no money." Speaking with Kamala Harris in 2024, Walz further recalled, "The medical bills broke her."

Their lifeline ended up being Social Security, which helped alleviate some of those medical bills. "We're fine pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, [but] we had no boots," he said. "That's the boots." Similarly, Walz told the 2024 DNC, "[My dad] left behind a mountain of medical debt. Thank God for Social Security survivor benefits."

In 2016, a violent storm swept through a Minnesota nature preserve called the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, killing a 43-year-old man and leaving his 8-year-old son in critical condition. Soon after tragedy struck, it was revealed that the fallen camper was Craig Walz, a teacher at the local St. Charles High School and brother of Tim Walz. Meanwhile, the young boy who was rushed to the hospital was Tim's nephew, Jacob Walz. The father and son were camping on Duncan Lake when severe winds toppled a tree onto their campsite, changing the family's lives forever. Sara Severs, a spokesperson for Tim Walz, told CBS News, "They are devastated by the loss."

While it was initially unclear how severe Jake's injuries were, Tim gave more insight into the tragic accident when he celebrated his nephew's perseverance in a 2019 Facebook post. "My nephew Jake was in an accident in the Boundary Waters that killed his father (my brother) and left him with dozens of broken bones and life-threatening injuries," he wrote. However, that didn't stop Jake from pursuing his passion for swimming and qualifying for the MSHSL Swimming Championship that year. "I am so proud he's my nephew," gushed Tim.

Tim Walz signed up for the Army National Guard just two days after his 17th birthday. For the next 24 years, he served in both the Nebraska and Minnesota Army National Guards before retiring in 2005 to focus on politics. It's a career path he has lauded openly, telling supporters at a 2024 campaign rally (via CBS News), "I'm proud to have served my country and I always will be." And yet, despite his lengthy service, several aspects of his time in the military have come under scrutiny.

For one, Walz openly listed his rank as command sergeant major in various biographies, but as CBS News uncovered, he was actually demoted to master sergeant after retiring because he never finished the necessary coursework to achieve the command sergeant major title. What's more, JD Vance — himself an Iraq War veteran — claimed that Walz purposely timed his retirement to avoid being deployed to Iraq. During a rally (via CNN) in Michigan, Vance alleged, "When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him."

After these claims — which were misleading because Walz filed for retirement a month before the potential deployment was announced — numerous politicians turned against him, overshadowing the sacrifices Walz made for his country in over two decades. Days after Vance's speech, 50 Republican members of Congress (all veterans) signed a letter (via Politico) to Walz in which they noted that while he should be proud, he should also apologize for his "egregious misrepresentations" of his service.

Gwen and Tim Walz have been candid about their long road to parenthood. After tying the knot in 1994, the couple struggled to start a family, eventually turning to fertility treatments and welcoming daughter Hope in 2001, followed by son Gus in 2006. Speaking with Glamour in 2024, Gwen revealed they decided to use intrauterine insemination (IUI), but didn't tell anyone, except for one neighbor who happened to be a nurse and helped give Gwen her daily shots. The process was, in her words, "an incredibly personal and difficult experience" and yet, they finally decided to speak their truth "after seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country."

In addition to the emotional journey, and the strength it took to share it, the couple then had to fend off mounting criticism because Walz incorrectly claimed they had used in vitro fertilization (IVF), rather than IUI. "Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children," he told MSNBC (via Axios). During IUI, sperm is placed into the uterus rather than a fertilized egg, like in IVF. Critics pounced on the seemingly misleading statements with JD Vance posting to X, formerly known as Twitter, "Who lies about something like that?" while Meghan McCain tweeted, "He is embellishing a truly bizarre level of falsehoods in his life story."

Gus Walz made headlines following his appearance at the 2024 Democratic National Convention as his enthusiastic, emotional reaction to dad Tim Walz's speech went viral. The 17-year-old cried openly and proudly shouted "That's my dad!" while pointing up at the stage. Many thought the moment was incredibly sweet, but a long slew of critics on the right wasted no time making fun of Gus' behavior. In a since-deleted tweet saved by the Daily Beast, Ann Coulter quipped, "Talk about weird..." Meanwhile, Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber mocked, "If the Walzs represent today's American man, this country is screwed." The co-hosts of Chicago's "Morning Answer" radio show even went as far as to compare Gus to a Chris Farley character from "Saturday Night Live," with Dan Proft asking on-air, "Can somebody get Gus Walz some Ritalin?"

All quickly apologized after learning that, just days earlier, Tim and Gwen Walz had opened up to People about their son, sharing he had a non-verbal learning disorder, ADHD, and anxiety. As Cleveland Clinic explains, a non-verbal learning disorder can hinder problem-solving, emotional regulation, and reading of social cues. Even so, Gus' proud parents told the publication, "It took time, but what became so immediately clear to us was that Gus' condition is not a setback — it's his secret power."