Jake Tapper’s Wife Jennifer Marie Brown Is a Women’s and Children’s Rights Advocate

Jake Tapper’s wife, Jennifer Marie Brown, has been passionate about helping those around her for many years. And her advocacy proved to have rubbed off on her daughter, who is pioneering change at a young age.

While Jake Tapper has made a name for himself as a lead anchor on CNN, his wife has been an inspiring figure in Washington, D.C, advocating for women’s and children’s rights.

Since graduating from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Jennifer Marie Brown has doubled as a superhero mom of two and a dedicated social worker, volunteer, board director, and more.

For over two decades, Brown has fought for equality, equity, and basic human rights for women and children through fund-raising and running organizations. In 2016, she worked part-time for Upstream, an organization founded in 2014 that strives to make contraception available to all women.

She currently holds the position of Board Director for Sepsis Alliance, a charitable organization dedicated to saving the lives of those with Sepsis and spreading awareness.

Brown and Tapper met at a hotel bar in Iowa in 2004. He was in Des Moines for work at “Good Morning America” when he walked into Hotel Fort Des Moines and saw his future wife. Tapper said:

“[…] I saw her, and I walked up to her, and we went out the next day in D.C., and that was it.”

Following their first date, Brown revealed that she knew “something was going to happen.” And she was right, as two years later, the couple celebrated their wedding day in Brown’s hometown of Missouri in September 2006.

Brown was 29 and working as a regional field manager in Washington for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America when she and Tapper married.

A few months after living in Tapper’s bachelor pad with James Bond posters, the newlyweds decided it was time to put down roots and build a home for their future family. And after their agent showed them a four-story home in Rock Creek, Washington D.C., she was immediately hooked.

They moved in May 2007, a few months before Brown gave birth to their eldest child, Alice. As a journalist and leading anchor for CNN — rubbing shoulders with Anderson Cooper, Kasie Hunt, and former CNN host Don Lemon — Tapper was often away. However, his wife shared, “Even when he’s not here, it doesn’t seem like he’s very far away.”

Nearly twenty years later, Brown and Tapper still find ways to keep the spark alive in their marriage, including going on date nights. In May, Tapper turned to Instagram to share a picture of him and his wife smiling as they enjoyed a “great” date night.

In November 2021, Brown and her husband rushed their daughter to the emergency room as she was suffering from stomach cramping, a low fever, chills, and vomiting.

However, the experience would be traumatic for the Brown/Tapper family as doctors missed the warning signs that Alice had appendicitis and initially misdiagnosed her. Alice said:

“I felt helpless. My condition wasn’t the only thing that alarmed me; so did the lack of recognition I received from the hospital. I was not being heard; when I described to the doctors how much pain I was in, they responded with condescending looks.”

Despite Brown and her husband’s insistence, their daughter’s pleas for a gastroenterologist went unanswered. It was after Alice endured hours of agonizing pain, prompting Brown to call her husband in tears, and Tapper personally reaching out to the hospital’s administrator and pleading for a gastroenterologist, that Alice finally received the appropriate medical attention.

Following her misdiagnosis, Alice and her mother have aimed to modernize how emergency room doctors diagnose appendicitis by speaking to medical students and health care providers and spreading awareness about the dangers of not recognizing the signs of appendicitis, pre-sepsis, and sepsis. Brown said:

“I hope to guide my children but also let them learn things on their own.”

Brown’s advocacy rubbed off on her daughter from a young age. Alice recalled how her mother helped her develop the “Raise Your Hand” patch in 2017. “Its message is that girls should have confidence, step up and become leaders by raising our hands,” Alice shared.

Brown’s “honest and truthful” husband also leads by example, as his work in politics keeps Alice and her brother updated with the world around them. “I listen to whatever you and Mom say, and when something big happens, I either get mad or happy or sad,” Alice told her father.