Who is Darline Graham Nordone? Lindsey Graham's sister appointed to serve out his term in the Senate

The late senator helped raise her after their parents died, and became her legal guardian when she was a teenager.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's younger sister, Darline Graham Nordone, was appointed to serve the remainder of the late South Carolina Republican's term in the U.S. Senate, state officials announced Monday. "Lindsey has always been there for me, and now I will be there for him," Nordone said during a press conference. "It is such a privilege to get to finish some of his important work."

Graham died Saturday at age 71 at his Washington, D.C., home after what his office described as a brief and sudden illness. Preliminary findings from the District of Columbia medical examiner determined the likely cause of death was an aortic dissection — a tear to the body's main artery — due to a heart condition. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced Nordone as Graham's temporary replacement at a press conference in Columbia, S.C., on Monday afternoon, hours after President Trump recommended that the governor pick her to fill the vacancy.

She is expected to be sworn as an interim senator in Washington on Wednesday. "This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!" the president wrote on social media.

Graham won last month's Republican U.S. Senate primary and was set to face Democrat Annie Andrews in November's general election. A special election to determine his replacement as the GOP nominee will be held next month. It's unclear whether Nordone intends to join that race and pursue a full six-year Senate term.

Graham helped raise his sister after their parents died Graham's mother died in 1976 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. She was buried the day before Nordone's 12th birthday, the Post and Courier reported. Fifteen months later, their father died of a massive heart attack.

Graham was 22 and a senior at the University of South Carolina. Nordone, then 13, discovered their father's body after trying to wake him for school. "I can remember the day my father passed away, standing in the living room of that house, absolutely scared to death," Nordone told NPR in 2015.

"Lindsey wrapped his arms around me and promised me he would always be there for me and always take care of me." Graham kept the promise, returning home from Columbia nearly every weekend to look after his sister, who lived with relatives in nearby Seneca, S.C., where he kept tabs on her curfew and her friends. "I never let her date.

I smelled her clothes if she smoked. I listened in on her phone calls. I was probably pressing too hard, just 'cause I felt such responsibility for her," Graham once told the Washington Post.

"I thought that was my job and I felt very happy to have done it. She is the light of my life." When he joined the Air Force as a military lawyer, he became Nordone's legal guardian and later adopted her so she would be eligible for his military benefits if anything happened to him.

"He's kind of like a brother, a father and a mother rolled into one," Darline said in a 2015 interview with the New York Times. Nordone went on to become a mother of two, and her career has focused on helping people with disabilities. According to her LinkedIn profile, she served for over a decade as communications director for the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department, and has been commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind — which assists blind or visually impaired South Carolinians — since 2019.

"Of all the things that have happened in my life, her turning out so well is the highlight of it by far," Graham told C-SPAN in 2015. No stranger to politics Although Nordone has never held public office, she was relatively active in supporting her brother's political ambitions, often appearing in his campaign ads. "I have always looked up to Lindsey," she said in a campaign ad for his 2014 reelection.

"He's just always been there for me as long as I can remember. If I fell down and scraped my knee, Lindsey was the one I ran to." And she was at his side when he launched his short-lived 2016 presidential campaign too.

Graham, who never married, told ABC News that if he were to win the White House, he would have a "rotating first lady," suggesting his sister and friends "could play that role if necessary."