What to know about Tim Walz’s wife, kids

The selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate put the Midwesterner in the national spotlight.
The spotlight on Walz, 60, is also on his wife and two children, who have spent the past six years as the first family of Minnesota.
Walz’s two children, Gus and Hope, had some fun in the spotlight Monday when they held up bunny ears behind their dad’s head during an interview at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The moment went viral on social media, and was acknowledged by Walz himself, who reposted the clip on X and wrote, “My kids keep me humble.”
Here are four things to know about Walz’s wife, Gwen, and their kids, Gus and Hope.
Gwen Walz, whose maiden name is Whipple, is a Minnesotan native whose parents were also educators, according to her official bio.
After graduating from college in Minnesota, Gwen Walz began her teaching career in Nebraska, where she met her future husband.
Gwen Walz was an English teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, at the same school where Tim Walz had begun his career as a teacher and football coach after serving in the Army National Guard, according to the governor’s bio.
The couple wed in 1994 and moved to Mankato, Minnesota, where they both continued teaching.
According to Gwen Walz’s biography, she and her husband together created a summer trip to China for students and traveled there “nearly every summer” for almost a decade.
Tim Walz has said he and his wife went through fertility treatments at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester for seven years before becoming pregnant with their first child, a daughter they named Hope, who was born in 2001.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper in March that he still remembers the day Gwen Walz called him in tears with the good news that she was pregnant.
“I said, ‘Not again,'” Tim Walz recalled, according to the newspaper. “She said, ‘No, I’m pregnant.’ It’s not by chance that we named our daughter Hope.”
The Harris campaign highlighted the Walzes’ personal experience with infertility in the selection announcement, writing, “Governor Walz and Mrs. Walz struggled with years of fertility challenges and had their daughter, Hope, through reproductive health care like IVF – further cementing his commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to this care.”
On Aug. 19, Gwen Walz shared for the first time the specifics of her treatment, which she said was intrauterine insemination, or IUI.
“Like millions of families across the country, for years, Tim and I tried to start a family through fertility treatments. We followed the journey that is infertility — the anxiety, the agony, and the desperation that can eat away at your soul,” Gwen Walz said in comments first given to Glamour, and then shared with ABC News by the Harris Walz campaign.
“Knowing that pain, I cannot fathom the cruelty of politicians who want to take away the freedom for couples to access the care they need. After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country — particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments — Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience,” she said.
In IUI, healthy sperm, provided by the woman’s partner or a donor, is, “placed in the uterus as close to the time of ovulation as possible,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The discrepancy over the type of infertility treatment Gwen Walz received — she said she underwent IUI, and not IVF, as was broadly assumed — quickly became political fodder in the presidential campaign.
Unlike IVF, the procedure does not involve freezing, transferring, or storing embryos.
Hope Walz graduated high school in 2019, according to her dad’s Facebook post.
Tim Walz celebrated his daughter’s 23rd birthday earlier this year on Jan. 9, sharing a photo on Instagram of Hope Walz posing in front of ski slopes, writing, “Happy Birthday, Hope! 23 runs for 23 years.”
Hope Walz is a frequent presence on her dad’s social media accounts, including a video on Instagram that Tim Walz reposted last Thanksgiving in which he humorously tries to convince his daughter to eat some turkey.
“I’m vegetarian,” Hope Walzsays in the video.
Last year, Hope Walz also joined her dad on what he described as the “most extreme ride” at the annual Minnesota State Fair.
In September, Tim Walz celebrated his daughter on National Daughter’s Day, writing on Instagram, “I have the best daughter a dad could possibly ask for.”
Gus Walz is a high school student who lives with his mom and dad in St. Paul, the state capital of Minnesota.
In 2019, the Walz family welcomed a new member to the family, a rescue Labrador mix named Scout, that Gus was credited with bringing into the family fold.
Tim Walz said in an Instagram post that the dog was adopted to fulfill a promise he made to Gus.
“I’m excited to announce that Minnesota has a new First Dog! And more importantly, I fulfilled my commitment to get my son a dog if I was elected Governor,” he wrote alongside several photos of Scout and the family.
More recently, in December, the Walzes welcomed another four-legged member of the family, an orange and white rescue cat named Honey.
“Say hello to Honey! The newest member of the Walz family,” Tim Walz wrote on X on Dec. 20, 2023. “She’s a rescue-pet and already has a few favorite spots: under the tree and right on top of whatever I’m trying to read.”
Editor’s note: This report has been updated to reflect Gwen Walz’s comments first given to Glamour on her infertility treatments.
ABC News’ Molly Nagle, Cheyenne Haslett, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Elizabeth Schulze contributed to this report.