BATON ROUGE -- Children, not politics, come first for Louisiana's new first lady.

Bill Haber / Associated Press

Congressman Bobby Jindal. (File Photo)

Supriya Jindal, 35, has put her Ph.D. on hold, along with her marketing job at a global chemical manufacturer. As she and husband Bobby move from Kenner into the Governor's Mansion, she said she intends to continue focusing on her children and has no clear plan for herself as first lady.

"Each first spouse sort of creates their own role, so I suspect as time goes on I'll sort of find my way," said Jindal. "I'm a mom with young kids, so I'll balance their lives, as well as mine."

Like her husband, Supriya Jolly Jindal grew up in Louisiana as a child of Indian immigrants.

Bobby Jindal was an acquaintance at Baton Rouge High School. She turned down his one request for a date, because her family was moving to Metairie.

She graduated from Grace King High School, then Tulane University, where she got a bachelor's degree in engineering.

As a chemical engineer, she worked in Luling at a herbicide plant run by Monsanto Co., while getting an MBA from Tulane. She then moved to Baton Rouge for a job marketing chemical products for Albermarle Corp., and began working on a Ph.D. in business at LSU.

She ran into Bobby Jindal again when he was head of the state Department of Health and Hospitals. This time she agreed to go out with him -- to a New Orleans Carnival ball.

They were married in 1997, less than a year after that first date.

The marriage has yielded three children for the Jindals: daughter Selia, 5, and sons Shaan, 3, and Slade, 17 months. Friends said Supriya Jindal deftly runs the household in spite of a swirl of national and international attention that has surrounded her husband's two campaigns for governor and two terms as a Republican congressman.

"I think she does the most incredible job keeping their family grounded," said Lori Rutland, a friend of Bobby Jindal's since the 1980s. "She's the most grounded person I've ever met."

The process of moving to Baton Rouge from Kenner has included getting her older children enrolled in school and pre-kindergarten and getting the Governor's Mansion ready for young residents: childproofing the electrical outlets and installing safety "baby gates" at the top of stairwells.

Child-raising now largely occupies her time, but Jindal said she's a steady reader of legal thrillers, enjoys jazz, classical music and opera -- and most of all loves to learn new things.

"I enjoy school. That's one of the things I guess people would say about me: I enjoy learning," she said.

As for government and her husband's new job, she said her only policy interest is children's health care -- a passion that stems from her experiences of getting care for her youngest child, who was born with a heart defect.

"After going through that experience, just as a parent, exp eriencing how difficult it is to see a child suffer, you just wonder if you (can) help children and the parents that are dealing with these types of things," she said.

Bobby Jindal describes Supriya as his life partner, best friend "and somebody I trust more than anyone else in life" -- though not someone he looks to as a political or policy adviser.

"The reality is, my wife's also got a full array of her own interests," he said.

The incoming governor, who takes office Monday, said he and his wife don't usually talk about his work, but he adds that she follows current affairs and asks him about things she reads in the paper.

"She doesn't have any interest in making these policy decisions and attending these meetings," he said.

"She didn't have this lifelong interest in politics or public policy. If I came home from this job and said, 'I think I'd like to do something different,' she'd be absolutely fine with that."

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Associated Press writer Melinda Deslatte contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)