JD Vance’s Stepmother Shares How She Was ‘Broken and Restored’

It took three failed marriages and “a lot of questionable choices” before Cheryl Bowman fully committed to God and discovered “unconditional love” from a man who rekindled a fractured relationship with his son, who is now vice president.

Vice President JD Vance’s father, Donnie Bowman, died of esophageal cancer in 2023 at age 64. Donnie and Cheryl Bowman were married for 36 years.

Amid her grief, Cheryl Bowman was inspired to write “Broken and Restored: An Autobiography of God’s Mercy, Grace and Redemption.”

The book, which she self-published on Amazon, chronicles her personal trauma while detailing the legacy of a man she says has often been misrepresented by the media.

Cheryl Bowman’s book is being adapted into a movie that will be filmed on location in Ohio, she said.

Details have yet to be finalized. Filming could begin this fall, according to her.

Lately, Cheryl Bowman travels around the country sharing her story at churches and events.

“When I look back on my life, God’s hand was always on me,” she told The Epoch Times. “I’ve asked myself a lot of times, why did I make the choices I made?

“The reason the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield is because where you’re going is more important than where you’ve been.”

Cheryl Bowman, 70, was raised in a devout Pentecostal family in Hamilton, a city in southwest Ohio outside of Cincinnati.

She said some of her fondest memories as a child and teenager are of church services, Sunday school classes, youth camp, and singing in the choir.

At 18, Cheryl Bowman learned that she was pregnant with her high school sweetheart. It was December 1973.

The couple married, but Cheryl Bowman said they divorced two years later after he left, leaving her alone to raise their son, Ryan.

She worked as a hairdresser and attended her family’s church, “still reeling in the shame and embarrassment from … pregnancy” and an unwanted divorce.

Cheryl Bowman married again in 1979, but that relationship also ended in divorce.

“I got caught up with the wrong crowd, who accepted me with open arms,” she said. “I was introduced to a world of drugs, which I had never been a part of.”

“Working as a hairdresser in a high-end salon, making great money, not caring what anyone thought of me, except my child, I began to spiral,” Cheryl Bowman said.

In 1981, a year after her second divorce was final, she married again, three months after first meeting the man.

She described that marriage as five years of a “roller coaster-like relationship.”

Cheryl Bowman left and filed for divorce in 1986.

“I was 31 with three divorces behind me and no idea what was ahead,” she said. “I was a wreck and spiraling out of control once again.”

A Better Life

A year later, her life took a better direction. At the time, she was working at a high-end hair salon and raising Ryan, who was 13.

“I would do my laundry and drop it off to my cousin, Barb, to iron for me,” Cheryl Bowman said. “One week, when I picked it up, she said she had placed a video in my laundry basket. She asked me to watch it if I could find some time.”

The video was based on preacher Larry Lea’s book “Could You Not Tarry One Hour?”

In it, he talked about making time for prayer, using the Lord’s Prayer as a guide.

“I decided to give it a try and got down on my knees,” Cheryl Bowman said.

“That night began my walk with God, my journey to get to know him, to find peace and joy. I found the path that would lead me not only to falling in love with him but to begin trusting him with my whole life, knowing he had a plan for me.”

Not long after that, Donnie entered her life—again. They had attended the same church when they were children.

After he turned 18, he had a brief marriage, divorced, drank, partied, and married Beverly Aikins, Cheryl Bowman said. They had Vance.

Aikins today also travels the country sharing her recovery story. She has now been sober for 11 years.

Marriage to Donnie

“Donnie gave his life to Jesus when JD was 1, but [Aikins] didn’t want anything to do with it at the time,” Cheryl Bowman said. “I remember him bringing her and JD to church.”

Time passed. Cheryl Bowman said she recalls a particular Sunday morning church service after she had started attending again.

“I was sitting with my cousin, and Donnie walked in,” Cheryl Bowman said with a grin. “I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to marry that man.’ She asked me if I was crazy and reminded me I had been divorced three times.”

During that New Year’s Eve service in 1987, as the calendar prepared to turn to 1988, the two struck up a conversation. A spark ignited, and they married three weeks later.

When the Bowmans married, Vance was 3. Ryan was 13. The couple then had a son, Cory, and a daughter, Chelsea.

“Those first three years were heavenly, but it changed when [Aikins] married Bob Hamel,” Cheryl Bowman said.

“[Aikins] and Memaw [Vance’s grandmother] didn’t want us to have visitation with JD. They wanted [Hamel] to adopt him.”

Donnie was torn, Cheryl Bowman recalled. At the time, 6-year-old Vance would cry when he was at the couple’s home.

His mother and grandmother told him that he would not be allowed to return and see them again, Cheryl Bowman said.

After repeated prayer and what he described as confirmations from God, Donnie decided to sign the papers that allowed Bob Hamel to adopt his son.

Recently, at a book signing, Cheryl Bowman met a man who said he was the judge who handled Vance’s adoption case.

“He told me it was [the] hardest adoption he remembers,” Cheryl Bowman said. “He said that Donnie sat in his chair and cried. He said he loved JD so much and that he had to let him go because of the trauma JD was going through. He was doing what he felt was the best for him.”

Painful Adoption

Six years passed. When Vance was 12, Aikins called the Bowmans.

“She said that she’d gotten divorced from [Hamel], and that she felt it was time JD saw his birth father again, and that JD was asking about him,” Cheryl Bowman said.

They arranged a visit to a park in Middletown, Ohio. Vance was back in the Bowman family’s lives, and their relationship grew.

Cheryl Bowman vividly recalled a conversation they had not long after he returned.

“We were in the car one day, and he was in the backseat talking about the end times and the mark of the beast and the tribulation,” she said. “I said, ‘How do you know all this stuff?’ He said, ‘I read.’”

Cheryl Bowman asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, perhaps thinking that he would become a preacher.

“He said he wanted to be president,” she said. “I said, ‘President of what?’ ‘Of the United States.’”

Hillbilly Elegy

Vance served in the Marines, earned degrees from Ohio State University and Yale University Law School, and flourished in Silicon Valley before returning to Ohio.

Before becoming a senator from Ohio in 2022 and then President Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024, Vance was catapulted into the national spotlight with his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Vance’s book was adapted into a namesake Netflix film in 2020.

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance’s father is described as having been largely absent from his life.

After writing the book, Vance called his father to let him know.

“He said, ‘Hey, I’ve written a book, and I don’t want you to be upset,'” Cheryl Bowman said. “And Donnie said: ‘Well, if there’s no lies in it, I’m not going to be upset. You know, it’s our life and how it’s been, and that’s fine.’”

Vance met his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, when they were students at Yale.

Initially, Cheryl Bowman said, her stepson was reluctant to introduce her to the family. He eventually agreed.

“My husband was a hillbilly, but he was a good man,” Cheryl Bowman said. “We just fell in love with her, and she felt the same about us. When they left and went out to the car, she forgot something in the house, came back in, and she said: ‘Thank you so much for this. We needed this.’

“Usha was part of the healing force between all of us.”

JD Vance’s ascent from venture capitalist and “Hillbilly Elegy” author to senator and vice president has been “surreal,” Cheryl Bowman said. That has covered the past few years.

“JD is the vice president, but I still see him as my stepson,” she said. “When we’re together, we don’t talk politics. He loves that, because he just wants family time.”

An Unlikely Friendship

Cheryl Bowman also acknowledged that the relationship she now shares with Aikins is an unlikely part of their remarkable story.

The two women are friends. At the 2024 Republican National Convention, they were photographed together.

“God restored her, just like he restored me,” Cheryl Bowman said.

Cory Bowman, who is a pastor and coffee shop owner in Cincinnati, ran for mayor of the city last year. He advanced from the primary to the general election before losing to the incumbent Democrat.

“I always knew him as a man of faith,” he said about his father. “When my dad devoted his life to God, he poured himself into other people. That is his legacy.”

“Broken and Restored” explores that legacy and his mother’s “inspiring” story, he said.

“I think that the ultimate message [from the book] is that it doesn’t matter where you start, and it doesn’t matter what you’re going through,” he said. “God can take anyone’s life and have it become a huge impact in this world if you just let him.”

In moments of silence, Cheryl Bowman said, she is often reminded of Donnie’s encouraging words.

According to her, Donnie would tell her: “Cheryl, he just wants to sweep your corners.

“He wants to get into those parts of your life that you close him off to, the parts that need to be revealed and cleaned out. If we allow him, he will take us to a whole new level.”