Everything You Wanted to Know About Cole Emhoff, Kamala Harris's Stepson

Cole, who is 26 years old, is Doug Emhoff’s older child from his first marriage to Kerstin Mackin. He has one sister, Ella, who is 21.

Cole was a senior in high school when his father and Harris got together, and he and his sister have both shared stories about adjusting to blended family life – especially one that includes a high-profile politician.

“I remember I saw a tweet that someone did. It was a photo of Kamala at the Kavanaugh hearing, and someone tweeted, like, ‘I’d hate to have to look at that face and explain why I’m late for curfew.’ And I was thinking, ‘I’ve literally had to do that,'” Cole said to The New York Times.

According to Cole, though, their family is equal parts loving and intellectual, with a huge level of support but also a lot of strong opinions going around. “We would just have these real conversations at dinner, almost Socratic, where we would all bounce off each other. It’s so interesting when I hear her speak publicly or read about her policy position. I’m like, Okay, I’ve seen that reflected at the dinner table, so I know it’s true to her,” he told Glamour.

In a 2019 essay for Elle, Harris revealed that her stepchildren are actually both named after jazz music legends. Cole is named for saxophonist John Coltrane, while Ella’s name honors Ella Fitzgerald.

According to a 2018 Vogue profile of Harris, Cole graduated from Colorado College in May 2017, where he majored in psychology.

At the time of Harris’s 2018 Vogue profile, Cole was working as an assistant at William Morris Endeavor, the famed talent and media agency. Since then, according to his LinkedIn, he’s moved on to a job as an executive assistant at Plan B Entertainment, a production company co-founded by Brad Pitt that’s produced Oscar winners like The Departed and Moonlight.