Senator Abdul El-Sayed celebrates historic win, shares family anecdote about Indian-American wife
Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim U.S. senator after winning Michigan’s Senate race, and highlighted a long-standing family joke about his marriage to Dr. Sarah Jukaku, whose family originates from Karnataka, India.
Abdul El-Sayed made history on Wednesday by becoming the first Muslim senator in the United States after winning Michigan’s Senate race, which gave Democrats control of Congress. In a video that went viral on X, the senator recalled a family joke made by an Egyptian uncle when he married Dr. Sarah Jukaku, noting, "There are 80 million Egyptians and you went and married an Indian woman?" El-Sayed responded humorously, "Amu, there are a billion of them so statistically speaking, this was a high probability."
The clip is part of the "Meet The Real Abdul El-Sayed" podcast posted on YouTube in August. The discussion covered his upbringing, family background and his wife’s Indian heritage. Dr. Jukaku, an Indian-American, comes from a family that migrated from Bhatkal, a coastal town in Karnataka. Her grandfather, Jukaku Shamshuddin, served as deputy finance minister in the former Mysore State, and her father, Dr. Tayeb Jukaku, is a nephrologist who studied medicine in Bengaluru before moving to the United States.
El-Sayed has previously joked that after nearly two decades of marriage he might be "more Indian than I'm Arab." At a campaign rally, Dr. Jukaku added a light-hearted comment, "Nobody tells him what to do, except me!" The couple has two daughters, Emmalee and Serene.