Gemi Bordelon was dancing alongside the LSU football team at the White House in January 2020 when someone filmed it, and the clip spread fast. She has never spoken about that day in public. The video outlasted the championship celebration that produced it, and the quiet from the woman in the middle of it is a good part of why her name stuck.
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Who is Gemi Bordelon?
Gemi Bordelon is the wife of Ben Bordelon, a former LSU offensive lineman who now runs Bollinger Shipyards, one of the largest shipbuilders in the United States. The family lives in Lafourche Parish in south Louisiana, where the Bordelons go back generations. She and Ben have three children, all of them tied to LSU. Before that championship trip to Washington, she had no public profile outside the state.
The White House dance that made her famous
The Tigers had just finished a perfect season. They beat Clemson 42 to 25 in New Orleans on January 13, 2020 to win the College Football Playoff title, and four days later the team flew to Washington to mark it.
Before the formal ceremony, a short clip went up showing players doing the “Get the Gat” dance in a hallway. Justin Jefferson and several teammates were in the shot, but the blonde woman near the front stood out, moving through the group like she had done it a hundred times. The guessing online started right away. Some thought she worked for the team. Others assumed she was White House staff.
Her own daughter settled it. Brooke Bordelon saw the speculation and replied to the clip:
it would be my mother
Baton Rouge station WBRZ confirmed the identity through its own sources that afternoon. Brooke did not add anything more, and her mother said nothing at all, then or since.
Why a private Louisiana mom was at the White House
Her place in that room made sense to anyone who knew the Bordelons, so she was never really the mystery the internet made her out to be. WBRZ reported at the time that the family had close ties to members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation and lived near the hometown of LSU coach Ed Orgeron. The deeper reason is the business her husband’s family built.
Bollinger Shipyards was founded by Ben’s grandfather, Donald Bollinger, and grew into the largest privately owned shipbuilder in the country. Ben’s own path through it is well documented:
- He started 31 games at LSU between 1993 and 1996 and was team captain and second-team All-SEC as a senior.
- He played in the NFL for the San Diego Chargers before retiring in 1999.
- He joined the family company as a project manager in 2000.
- He became chief operating officer in 2013.
- He bought the business with the Chouest family in 2014 and took over as president, chairman and chief executive.
Today Bollinger has yards across Louisiana and Mississippi and close to 4,000 workers, and it has delivered more than 186 vessels to the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy and Army.
That standing was on display again in October 2025, when Ben Bordelon returned to the White House for a very different reason. He stood beside President Trump and Finnish President Alexander Stubb as the two countries signed a roughly $6 billion deal for Bollinger to build new Arctic icebreakers for the Coast Guard. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, whose district covers the company’s Lockport headquarters, welcomed it as a win for the state. So when the championship team gathered at the White House in 2020, the Bordelons were a natural part of the day.
The 1992 song behind the dance
The dance had a long life before it ever reached Washington.
“Get the Gat” is a New Orleans bounce record by Lil Elt, cut in 1992 over a beat producer KLC built from a Black Sheep sample. Bounce is a fast, call-and-response style of hip-hop that came out of the city, and the track names local neighborhoods one after another. It stayed a regional favorite for almost thirty years. LSU safety Grant Delpit, a New Orleans native, brought it back when he tweeted a locker room video of teammates dancing to it on December 29, 2019, the day after LSU beat Oklahoma in the Peach Bowl. From there it became the soundtrack of a 15-0 season and Joe Burrow’s Heisman run. The White House version, with her in it, is the one most people remember.
A family built around LSU football
The LSU connection runs through the whole family. Brooke, the oldest, enrolled at LSU in 2020 and married former Tigers player Grant Gauthreaux in 2022. Bo, an offensive lineman from the 2022 signing class, has appeared in more than 40 games for the team. Brett, also an offensive lineman, signed in 2025 and redshirted his first year. For a stretch that put two Bordelon sons on the LSU line at once, three decades after their father played there.
One correction is worth making. Several older articles say Brooke graduated from LSU in 2020. Local reporting from early 2021 described her as a freshman, so the graduation year repeated across the web does not line up.
Some other details that travel with her name do not hold up either. The net worth figures posted online have no reliable source behind them. Her exact birth date and any job title are not documented by credible outlets.
The moment she never claimed
In May 2026, Indiana won the national title and recreated the dance during its own White House visit, copying the 2020 version closely. The woman who made it famous was not there and said nothing about it, the same as always.
She stepped in front of a camera once, drove home to Raceland, and let everyone else do the talking. The moment kept going without her.
