Next up for Gisele Fetterman: Firefighting, thrifting, and being ‘good at today’

BRADDOCK, Pa. — Gisele Barreto Fetterman couldn’t stay for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s inauguration ball. After his swearing-in, she quickly changed out of a chic thrifted green cloak, threw on her training gear, and raced to the Fire Academy, where she’s taking classes to become a volunteer firefighter.

“I was sad to miss it,” Fetterman said of the glitzy gala. “I think John was relieved. Balls aren’t really his thing.”

That Gisele Fetterman — the stylish, friendly foil to her more gruff and casually dressed husband, is becoming a firefighter may seem out of character. But Fetterman is used to surprising people. Her husband campaigned on being an atypical politician, and she has never fit the stereotype of a political wife.

“My view on politics is, just don’t be a dick,” she told The Inquirer in a conversation earlier this month at a co-working space for female business owners in Braddock.

Since the election, the couple have settled into very different routines. He’s a newly elected U.S. senator debating big issues in Washington, while she’s home in Braddock, raising three kids and working with her nonprofits, trying to fill in gaps where government policies have failed.

“I’ll always talk about the things I really care about,” she said. “Any kind of forgotten people, immigration ... sustainability, climate, environment, wearing reused clothing. ... Whatever that looks like, I kind of let it find me. I don’t have a plan. I never had a plan for anything. I really believe in, you know, bloom where you’re planted.”

Like her former-lieutenant-governor husband, Fetterman has become a political celebrity despite a pretty obscure platform — second lady of Pennsylvania, or SLOP, as she coined it. She was extremely involved on the Senate trail and became an even bigger presence while her husband was recovering from his stroke. Fetterman has made it crystal clear she has no interest in running for office, but that hasn’t stopped her from using her visibility as one of Pennsylvania’s most engaged political spouses — and one of the state’s most prominent Latinas — to spotlight issues that matter to her.

Gisele Fetterman carries a huge box of packaged Costco Belgian waffles from the back of her Jeep as rain pours down outside the Free Store, a food, supply, and clothing donation stop that serves the region.

Fetterman calls the Free Store, which turned 10 this year, her “happy place.” She was there when her water broke ahead of delivering her youngest, August, and it’s become a spot where volunteers and shoppers, particularly women, trade goods as well as support.

On a recent Thursday, Fetterman was a tiny tornado of positivity, buzzing around in maroon rain boots, directing people dropping off donations and encouraging shoppers to take a waffle.

The store was born out of Fetterman’s childhood as an undocumented immigrant living with her mother and younger brother in a one-room apartment in Queens. Her family, who fled violence in Brazil, didn’t have a lot, and she marveled at what people would toss on their sidewalks.

“For me the biggest shock was as a kid moving here from a country where people literally were dying of hunger to a place of just mass disposability. … I just thought that was a better way to do it.”

That philosophy translates to her wardrobe, which is mostly reused. That blue dress she wore to Fetterman’s first visit to the Capitol cost $12, and the green cape she wore to Shapiro’s came from a thrift store in Pittsburgh.

Melvenia Glover, 69, a Free Store volunteer and Braddock resident, marvels at how her friend transitions between worlds: flying on Air Force One one day, back at the thrift shop to sweep up cigarette butts and broken hangers the next.

“She’ll ... fit in with them, and she comes back here with our silly tales and she fits in with us,” Glover said. ”She fits in everywhere.”

Another friend and volunteer, Shiane Prunty, described Fetterman as “still the same person, more caring and shy than people realize but never low-key and always on the move.”'

Fetterman says she thrives on a busy schedule because she wants to experience as much as she can, and because of her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which, she jokes is her superpower.

Fetterman first learned about Braddock on a yoga retreat in Costa Rica while flipping through a magazine that mentioned the town and its unconventional mayor. She’d been working as a nutritionist in Newark, and wrote a letter to the borough asking to visit. Then-Mayor John Fetterman showed her around and in 2008, they married.

It’s an incredible meet-cute story she’s repeated in interviews and on the trail, but it also marked the beginning of her 15-year relationship with Braddock, the former steel town where her husband launched his career.

A small community of old mills and faded rowhouses outside Pittsburgh, Braddock suffered from years of disinvestment and population loss. It still struggles with the challenges found in similar Western Pennsylvania communities. During the race, a lot of John Fetterman’s critics pointed to those issues to question his impact years earlier as mayor.

For Gisele Fetterman, those ongoing challenges fuel her nonprofit work. In addition to the Free Store, she started Hollander, the coworking space, which houses an eyelash artist and a gun violence support group, among others.

“No Fetterman is saying, ‘I saved this town,’” said Kristen Michaels, who cofounded Hollander. “They stayed because they saw an opportunity to do good and help the community. ... Whatever your opinion of them, there just aren’t a whole lot of people who dedicate two decades of their life to a community.”

Fetterman says she has no plans to leave the place where her three children were born. She turned down the opportunity once before in 2019, when Fetterman became lieutenant governor and the family declined to move to a mansion in Harrisburg. She plans to make one to two visits a month to Washington.

“I think distance is great for couples,” she said with a chuckle.

At the Fire Academy, Fetterman, 40, is the oldest trainee: a point of pride that she’s made a life lesson for her kids: You’re never too old to start pursuing a dream.

Her interest in firefighting started at a very young age in Queens. She remembers the neighborhood coming together to bless a new firetruck. The kids got cotton candy and were invited up to push all the buttons.

At home now, reactions were mixed. Her 8-year-old son cried. Her 11-year-old daughter told her she was being ridiculous, and her older son, 13, asked if she was going to do a calendar. Her husband was less fazed. “He’s lived with me long enough, he’s like, ‘OK, it’s always something else,’” she said.

CJ Kaminsky, chief of the Rivers Edge Volunteer Fire Department, was wary of getting into the story of his newest trainee. Everything seems to become politicized, he feared.

But in a brief telephone interview, he said of Fetterman: “She’s got a good heart on her, and she wants to do this. Anyone who wants to volunteer, as long as they’re willing to go through the training, we’ll accept.”

Most of the criticism Gisele Fetterman receives has ricocheted off her husband. Even the senator’s sharpest detractors don’t have many substantial criticisms of his wife. (I asked them.)

Chardae Jones, who was appointed Braddock’s mayor in 2019 after Fetterman stepped down, made headlines for backing State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta in the Democratic primary instead of Fetterman.

That ended her friendship with Gisele Fetterman. “Politics,” Jones shrugged in a recent interview.

But Jones still commended Fetterman’s work in the community. “She helps people.”

The most cutting — largely baseless and often racist — attacks have come from conservative media.

After her husband’s stroke, which Gisele Fetterman recognized was happening within moments, likely saving his life — she took on a more prominent role on the campaign. That led to questions about her political future, despite her unequivocal responses: “I have no desire to ever run for politics. I’ve said this in like 100 interviews,” she told The Inquirer. “I have no ego and desire no power.”

Still, she was depicted on Fox News and other conservative media sites as conniving and gunning for her husband’s spotlight.

Fetterman blasted back, telling the New Republic magazine that “the right-wing hates women.” That brought kudos as well as more hate — more than 400 Instagram DMs, some of them rape threats.

“Way to prove my point,” she said.

Fetterman is extremely self-reflective about who she is and all of the contradictions that make up a person. She’s resilient (she accepted the primary nomination on behalf of her husband, hours after leaving his hospital room) but also emotional. “I’m a Pisces. We cry all the time.”

It’s a kind of candor you don’t typically get when you sit for 30 minutes with a politician or a politician’s spouse.

And her sensitivity, can be a strength. On the campaign trail, she often connected personally with voters, hugging anyone she recognized and some she’d just met.

She credits her grandmother with teaching her how to harness empathy.

“She would say, ‘Giselie, you give love because that’s what’s inside of you … but they’re giving what’s inside of them.’ It was really simple wisdom,” Fetterman said. “But it was really important to hear.”

Between fires and the Free Store, her daughter’s basketball games and advocacy work, Fetterman is also helping her husband adjust to Washington. He continues to struggle with auditory processing in the wake of his stroke but has gotten to know colleagues in spite of that, she said.

“I tell him just what I would say to my kids going to school, like, ‘Be true to yourself. Be the best version of yourself.’”

Gisele Fetterman’s mother, who lives nearby, helps her with the kids. As they’ve gotten older and more independent, she worries less about how politics affects them.

“I’m trying to raise really resilient kids, and I never forget that I’m raising kids for the world. ... I’ve tried to make politics such a small part of their life.”

It’s a point of pride for her that they asked if they really had to go to their father’s inauguration earlier this month.

As for the year ahead, Fetterman hopes to pass her exams to become a volunteer firefighter in May, and she wants to take her kids to visit family in Brazil.

She’s not thinking too far past that.

“You know, today I’m gonna be the best I can as a mom, as a spouse ... in my nonprofit work, and then tomorrow, I’ll figure it out or start all over again. Nothing is promised. My husband had a stroke three days before the primary. So I’m really good at today, and I’m OK with that.”