Chasten Buttigieg


Chasten James Glezman Buttigieg is an American teacher, author, and LGBTQ activist. He is married to Pete Buttigieg, the former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and was an advisor, spokesperson, and social media campaigner during his husband's 2020 presidential campaign. In September 2020, Buttigieg released a memoir titled I Have Something to Tell You. He published a YA adaptation of his memoir in May 2023. In May 2025, he published a picture book, ''Papa's Coming Home.''

Early life and education

Buttigieg was born Chasten James Glezman, on June 23, 1989, in Traverse City, Michigan, to Sherri and Terry Glezman, owners of a landscaping business. The youngest of three brothers, he was raised in Chums Corner, a suburban area outside Traverse City, in a conservative Catholic family. As a teenager, Buttigieg worked at a cherry products store called Cherry Republic and drove tractors on his grandfather's cherry farm in Suttons Bay. He won a blue ribbon in pit spitting at the National Cherry Festival.
Buttigieg attended Traverse City West Senior High School and spent his senior year as an exchange student in Germany. He took classes at Northwestern Michigan College before attending the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire; he graduated in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in theater and global studies. Later, Buttigieg attended DePaul University in Chicago where he received a Master of Education degree in 2017. That summer, Buttigieg began an AMS/MACTE certificate from Xavier University.

Career

After graduating from college, Buttigieg moved to Milwaukee, where he worked as a teaching artist for First Stage Children's Theater as well as in classroom settings in the greater Milwaukee area.
While pursuing his graduate degree, he was a substitute teacher in both Chicago and South Bend public schools. In fall 2017, Buttigieg began as a junior high humanities teacher at the Montessori Academy in Mishawaka, Indiana. He also taught theater and ran a diversity club. He took a leave of absence to support his husband's campaign. In January 2019, Buttigieg joined the Civic Education Team of the South Bend Civic Theatre as the director of curriculum.
In 2016, Buttigieg was a state Democratic delegate for St. Joseph County. He was the List of first gentlemen in [the United States|first gentleman] of South Bend, Indiana, from June 16, 2018, to January 1, 2020.

2020 presidential election

Buttigieg was a campaign spokesperson, advisor, and social media campaigner for his husband Pete Buttigieg's campaign. If his husband had been elected, Chasten identified improving the nation's public schools, arts education, and mental health as the areas he would have directed his attention towards as First Gentleman. He also supports LGBTQ rights.
After his husband's withdrawal from the race, both endorsed Joe Biden and campaigned for him. Since the campaign, Buttigieg now considers Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff close friends.

Post-2020 presidential campaign

Buttigieg was a Harvard Institute of Politics Fellow for the fall 2020 virtual semester.
On September 1, 2020, Buttigieg released his debut memoir, I Have Something to Tell You. The hardcover edition debuted at number 12 on The [New York Times Best Seller list|The New York Times Best Seller list] for hardcover non-fiction.
In December 2020, Buttigieg criticized Joseph Epstein's op-ed about Jill Biden's academic credentials, calling it sexist.
Buttigieg published a YA adaptation of I Have Something to Tell You in 2023, entitled I Have Something to Tell You -- For Young Adults, which "focuses mostly on his youth and not on his adult life with Mayor Pete," according to Kirkus Reviews. It was #3 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Books in May 2023. In 2025, he published a picture book, Papa's Coming Home, which was #4 on the New York Times Children's Picture Book List in May 2025.

Personal life

Buttigieg came out to his family at 18 and soon moved out, living with friends and in his car before returning home about two months later. In 2019, Buttigieg reported he now had a "great relationship" with his parents. In 2020, Buttigieg shared in his memoir that he was sexually assaulted by a friend of a friend when he was 18. The experience left him feeling ashamed for years.
Chasten and Pete Buttigieg first met on the dating app Hinge in the summer of 2015. They met in person that August while Chasten was in graduate school. They got engaged in December 2017 at O'Hare International Airport, and married on June 16, 2018, at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. James in South Bend; the two appeared at the South Bend Gay Pride block party following their nuptials. On August 17, 2021, Buttigieg announced on his personal Twitter account that he and his husband had become parents. On September 4, Pete Buttigieg tweeted a photo of the couple with their newborn adopted twins, a son and a daughter.
Buttigieg lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with his husband and their two children, near his parents and other friends and relatives.

Published works