After almost four years of upending centuries-old gender stereotypes, Emhoff told the enthusiastic crowd he was ready for the next challenge: “Now I get to support my wife, Kamala Harris, running for president of the United States.”

Emhoff, who could become the first first gentleman of the United States, set aside his 30-year career as a high-profile Los Angeles entertainment lawyer when Harris assumed office. He has spoken candidly about the difficulties of leaving the work he loved to support Harris’s political aspirations — including at Monday’s event, where he paid credit to President Biden, who Emhoff said “had my back personally in some of my toughest moments as second gentleman.”

“It was always the president who came up to me and said: ‘Look, I know, kid, you’re a great lawyer. I know this must be tough, but what better way to leave that and to support your wife, who you love so much and your country that you love so much,’” an emotional Emhoff said, as Biden — who was unable to make the event as he recovers from covid-19 — listened in.

Emhoff, 59, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Matawan, N.J., before he moved with his parents and two siblings to the Los Angeles area in his teens. He attended college and law school in California and went on to build a successful entertainment litigation practice, which he folded into a large law firm, Venable.

A former colleague, Alex Weingarten, described Emhoff in 2021 as someone who specialized in building teams. On cases, the two partners would assume the roles of good cop and bad cop: Emhoff was always the good cop, Weingarten told The Washington Post.

Emhoff later became a partner at DLA Piper but left in 2020 to avoid potential conflicts of interest between that firm’s lobbying portfolio and Harris’s political career.

Harris and Emhoff’s story is one of later-in-life love — written, literally, in Hollywood. Harris’s close friend, Chrisette Hudlin, set the pair up in 2013 after she met Emhoff at a business meeting.

Emhoff made his introduction to Harris in part through a lengthy voicemail — which he worried was “disastrous,” the vice president wrote in her memoir. But Harris, then living in San Francisco and working as California’s attorney general, was charmed and flew to Los Angeles for their first date.

The morning after, Emhoff shared his availability for another date, writing in an email that he was “too old to play games or hide the ball. I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work,” he said.

He told CBS in a recent interview: “It was love at first sight, and we’ve been together ever since.”

They married in 2014 at a small ceremony in Santa Barbara that involved smashing a glass in honor of Emhoff’s Jewish background and in which Emhoff wore a flower garland to celebrate Harris’s Indian heritage. Emhoff’s children from his first marriage, Cole and Ella, call the vice president “Momala” — and Harris has forged a friendship with Emhoff’s first wife, film producer Kerstin Emhoff, who is vocal online about her support for the vice president.

Emhoff and Harris’s relationship would ultimately lead him to the unprecedented role of the nation’s first second gentleman and the first Jewish vice-presidential spouse.

During the past three and a half years, Emhoff has carved out a multifaceted role for himself. He has visited coronavirus vaccine clinics, worked to expand access to legal aid services, advocated for gender equity and become a leading voice in the White House’s efforts to combat antisemitism, including by taking a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2023 to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He has also embraced his Jewish heritage by celebrating Passover at the White House.

After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, he told the Los Angeles Times that, despite feeling “sheer pain and shock … I’m still going to keep doing what I’m doing — focus on fighting against hate and antisemitism and Islamophobia.”

Emhoff also teaches at Georgetown Law School, which described him as “one of the nation’s leading intellectual property and business litigators.” He took up the role after stepping away from his position at DLA Piper.

And while he has discussed the attendant difficulties, he told Glamour in 2020 that “I’m humbled, I’m honored to have put it all on hold — my career, family life, everything” to help the Biden-Harris campaign.

In his White House biography, Emhoff is quoted as saying that he hopes to “inspire the next generation of supportive spouses.”

“I’m the first man to take this role,” he said, “but I definitely don’t want to be the last.”

More than 44,000 people logged onto a Zoom call to support Harris and raised more than $1.5 million for her campaign in three hours, according to Win With Black Women founder Jotaka Eaddy.

“Anybody that does not think that Black and Brown women are the backbone of this party, they don’t know us,” Star Jones, the lawyer and former talk show host, told The Washington Post. “[Harris] has already been leading by example. We are going to support her, we’re going to raise money for her, and we’re going to get out the vote for her.”

The call shows the ways in which Black women, a key Democratic voting bloc, plan to galvanize and organize to support Harris. The call, which attracted several celebrities and political figures, was off the record and everyone spoke in their personal capacities, but many attendees described to The Post that it felt like church, a family reunion, a rally or the online hangouts from the height of quarantine.

Even though they were told not to, people streamed the Zoom on other sites such as Clubhouse, Twitch and YouTube.

Eaddy organized the Zoom call the same way in which she has hosted most Sunday night calls for Win With Black Women since August 2020. The organization says it aims to elect Black women nationwide and speaks out against racism and sexism. At the height of the 2020 election, she said the most attendees she had on one Zoom call was 1,500 people. Eaddy was expecting a few hundred last night.

But she realized something was different around 2 p.m., when she got a message that 50 people were in the Zoom waiting room. The call was set to start at 8:30 p.m.

By 7:50 p.m., the Zoom was at capacity with 1,000 people. Members contacted Zoom, which moved the group to a webinar, giving them unlimited capacity to expand their attendees.

“I am forever grateful to the leadership of Zoom for what they did,” Eaddy said.

She said “allies” who identify as Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Black men joined the Zoom to show their support. But the majority of the call focused on Black women’s collective power to elect Harris.

“What happened last night was historic,” Eaddy said. “It really is the culmination of so many Black women for years and years and years that have been working, cultivating and creating for this moment. And last night was also a homage, a work to them and their sacrifice.”

Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr.; 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the most senior Black woman in the House; and Donna Brazile, the two-time acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, each spoke during the call. Jones, actress Jenifer Lewis, first lady of Maryland Dawn Moore, radio host Angela Rye, U.S. Senate hopeful Angela D. Alsobrooks and author Luvvie Ajayi Jones also joined.

Many representatives of the nine Black sororities and fraternities that exist under the National Pan-Hellenic Council, known as the Divine Nine, also spoke. Alpha Kappa Alpha, of which Harris is a member, formed the first Black sorority in 1908.

Naima Cochrane, a music industry executive and writer, spent the early part of her Sunday afternoon shocked about Biden’s announcement. She said she was not confident in American voters, though she was confident about Harris. But the call lit a fire under her.

“There was no conversation about doubt. There was no ‘what if we can’t’; it was ‘this is what we’re about to do,’” Cochrane said. “People needed to know directives. That there is a strategy, that we’re unified in messaging, and their next steps. We can go forward confidently and strongly now to combat misinformation and combat naysayers.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has endorsed Harris, said she got at least 10 messages from people telling her about the Zoom call. Bowser told The Post on Monday that she was at an event celebrating Washington’s restaurant scene when she joined the call. When other women heard she was stepping out to log on, they asked if they could come. So a dozen women huddled around an iPhone outside the event and listened.

Bowser said there was “collective anxiety about what is coming.” She said the women are expecting sexist attacks against Harris from political opponents. She logged on again on her way home. After putting her daughter to sleep and walking the family’s dog, she logged on for a third time. The call, Bowser said, “is indicative of what these women are going to do over the next several months.”

The founder of Black Girls Vote, Nykidra “Nyki” Robinson, said she received the Zoom link about 15 times, starting at 3 p.m. After putting her 2-year-old to sleep, she joined the call at 9:40 p.m.

“Sometimes we work in silos, but I felt a sense of community being on the call and feel better equipped to mobilize young voters,” she said.

“I hope Joe Biden feels the love. We’re grateful for him,” Robinson said. “We’re also really excited to support Harris in this moment in history. The call was very much about sisterhood, unity and love.”

Jane, a Black woman in Connecticut who spoke to The Post on the condition that only her first name be published because she feared retribution from her employer, spent last night watching the Zoom call from her kitchen island on speakerphone as one of her 11-year-old sons listened in. He asked her whether Harris would be president, and she explained to him how the nomination process works.

She said she was glad her son saw a group of Black women come together so quickly to support each other.

“This is a message to the world,” she said. “Don’t underestimate Black women in this country and the reach we have. Sometimes we’re ignored, but you would want to be our friends because that’s how fast we were able to get that information out. It was lightning speed.”

Mariam Sarr logged on to the Zoom at 10 p.m. determined to make sure the Democratic Party does not “skip over Harris.”

“As a young Black woman in corporate America, I know what it feels like to be passed over. I feel energized in a way like I did in 2008. I actively campaigned for Obama when I was in college and hit the streets campaigning. Last night felt like the same way.”

On Monday night, political commentator Roland Martin will host his own online discussion with the Win With Black Men group.

Star Jones, who has known Harris for several years and is a founding member of Win With Black Women, was tasked with fundraising. As the creator of the Brown Girls Fundraising Collective, Jones told The Post that she spent last night at a dinner with people working to see how they could fund Harris’s campaign. She got a fundraising link together but had no graphics. Leaders of the Zoom call told her to join around 11:43 p.m.

She told the attendees the challenge was to raise $1 million over the next 100 days. She dropped the fundraising link at 11:50 p.m. “Within 100 minutes we raised $1 million,” Jones said.

The money will go directly to the Harris presidential campaign, according to Jones.

“People don’t tend to think we actually have the power of the pocketbook,” Jones said. “So in addition to what we spend as consumers, we actually do give in a political climate when we feel we have skin in the game.”

As of 1:30 p.m. Monday, Jones said they had raised more than $1.6 million dollars from more than 13,000 donors.