Kathleen Anne Buhle was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a middle-class Catholic family.

[4][5] She was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, with a degree in psychology.

[citation needed] They married in July 1993, and she gave birth to their first daughter, Naomi King Biden, on December 21, 1993.

Biden and Buhle moved to Washington, D.C., where her husband was a law student at Georgetown University.

The family later settled in Wilmington, Delaware, and, in 1997, bought an estate dating back before the American Revolution.