Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is scheduled to speak to the Republican National Convention on Tuesday. As he’s risen to what may very well be the high point of his political career thus far, his wife, Kelley, has been by his side. And unlike a lot of spouses of politicians, who keep a comparatively low profile and prefer to manage the affairs of the household back home, Kelley Paul has created a name for herself in her own right.
She’s A Mother To Three Sons
Kelley Ashby was a former Air Force brat who lived here and there across the country as her father served in the military. For a time, she even lived in Turkey. The family moved to Russellville, Kentucky, when she was a teenager.
In a 2015 Bowling Green Daily News profile of Mrs. Paul, childhood friend Kelley Smith Steenbergen said that the adult Mrs. Paul, wife of a prominent Republican politician, is the same person she was as a teenager in Russellville.
“What you see of Kelley now is what she was then. Kelley was always the perfect girl. She was nice to everyone at school. She was strong academically. She was a strong, bright girl,” Steenbergen said.
According to Yahoo News , she met Rand Paul at a backyard oyster roast in Atlanta, where the future doctor was completing a surgical rotation at Georgia Baptist Hospital.
They married on October 20, 1990, and in those 30 years, they’ve become the parents to three sons: William, Duncan and Robert.
Another friend, Alicia Stivers, said that Kelley started a book club with her. Though she can’t make many book clubs these days due to her husband’s commitments in Washington, she still tries to make as many meetings as she can.
Alison Baker said that the adult Mrs. Paul represents the homespun Kentucky values for which her husband advocates in Congress.
“I think she is a great spokesperson for her husband and the things they stand for. I think they have a lot of family values that everybody looks for. They have those values that reflect the Bible Belt,” Baker said.
She’s A Freelance Writer
Now that her sons are adult men, and she no longer needs to be at home to take care of them, Mrs. Paul has forged her own career. She’s done consulting work, according to Newsmax , and she has a position on the board at Helping a Hero, a charity that builds houses for wounded war veterans.
Writing under her maiden name, Kelley Ashby has penned the book T rue and Constant Friends: Love and Inspiration from Our Grandmothers, Mothers, and Friends.
A synopsis on Goodreads says that Kelley and her group of seven friends — women who have known each other since college — were preparing to celebrate a friend’s milestone birthday. That is when Kelley decided to get to know more about the women who inspired them, in much the same way that her own mother and grandmother had inspired her.
“As you read each one, you’ll discover, as Kelley did, that they’re the stories of women everywhere, for they are personal yet universal, ordinary yet extraordinary,” the synopsis reads, in part.
