Ajit singh randhawa parent
Nikki Haley called Donald Trump's comments about her husband's military service 'disgusting.' Meet the Haley family.
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- Former governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley is running for president in 2024.
- A campaign ad focuses on her husband, who is on a yearlong deployment with the National Guard.
- The couple, who met at Clemson University as teenagers, have two children, Rena and Nalin.
Nikki Haley highlighted her husband, Michael, and his service with the National Guard in a campaign ad.
"When Michael returned from Afghanistan, loud noises startled him," the 2024 Republican presidential candidate says in the video, which was released in December. "He couldn't be in crowds. The transition was hard."
Michael Haley, a major in the South Carolina Army National Guard, was deployed for the first time while his wife was the state's governor. He was deployed again this year — this time to Africa — meaning he will be abroad for much of his wife's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
In June, Nikki Haley joked at CNN's town hall that he "seems to find really interesting times" to be called to serve in the National Guard.
"We're so proud," she said at the time. "Deployments are never convenient, but they're necessary."
After Donald Trump mockingly questioned her husband's military service in February, Nikki Haley called his comments "disgusting" in an interview with CNN.
Here's a closer look at Nikki Haley's family, including husband Michael, their children, and her parents.
Haley's parents, Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa, are Indian immigrants from Punjab who both worked as teachers and owned a clothing boutique.
Haley's mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi. After moving to South Carolina, she earned a master's degree in education and taught in Bamberg public schools for seven years.
Her father, Ajit, earned a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and worked as a biology professor at Voorhees College for 29 years before retiring from teaching in 1998.
The Randhawas also operated a foreign-goods store in Bamberg that grew into Exotica International, a clothing boutique. Haley helped with bookkeeping as a teenager. The store closed in 2008 when Haley's parents retired after 32 years of operating the business, according to a press release from the company.
Born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, Haley has three siblings: two brothers, Mitti and Charan, and a sister, Simran.
Haley was raised Sikh and converted to Christianity before marrying her husband, Michael Haley, in 1996.
In her 2020 Republican National Convention speech, Haley spoke about the challenges of growing up in a Sikh family in South Carolina, saying that "America is not a racist country," but rather "a story that's a work in progress."
"I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants," she said. "They came to America and settled in a small Southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a Black and white world. We faced discrimination and hardship, but my parents never gave in to grievance and hate."
When she married Michael — whom she met at Clemson University when they were both teenagers — they held two wedding ceremonies, one Sikh and one Methodist.
"I was born and raised with the Sikh faith, my husband and I were married in the Methodist Church, our children have been baptized in the Methodist Church, and currently we attend both," she told The New York Times in 2010.
Michael is a major in the South Carolina Army National Guard.
Michael joined the National Guard in 2006 and was deployed to Afghanistan for 11 months in 2013. His unit, the Agribusiness Development Team, worked to help support local farmers in Afghanistan with growing crops to sustain their communities.
"Seeing him, I felt like I took my first breath in a year," Haley told the Associated Press after her husband returned from his first deployment.
While he was deployed, Nikki and Michael communicated mostly by email, the Associated Press reported.
"There's a lot lost in translation," Michael said. "You don't get the emotion, the humor you get in one-on-one communication on the telephone or physically being there."