What Does New House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ‘Covenant Marriage’ With His Wife Kelly Mean?

When asked about choosing a covenant marriage, Mike Johnson said: “My wife and I both come from traditional Christian households. My own parents are divorced. As anyone who goes through that knows, that was a traumatic thing for our whole family,” via ABC News. It was important for Kelly Johnson as well, and she saw it as a definite plus that Mike wanted to make their marriage a covenant one. The couple have four children together, and in a recent Facebook post in honor of Kelly’s birthday, Mike wrote: “Her confidence and counsel are invaluable to me and to so many others, and she is the muse and the great joy of my life.”

So Johnson’s relationship with his wife seems on a solid footing. But we’ll have to wait and see if his relationship with the House of Representatives stays as strong. It could help that he currently has the support of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in contrast to the last speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had a complex relationship with Trump. During his six years as a representative, Johnson has voted against same-sex marriage and abortion legislation, and he actively worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election.