law at the University of Michigan (1900-1901), where he was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. After a brief stint working in New York at Collier's Weekly magazine, he returned home in 1906 to marry his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Watson. They had three children. She died in 1917, and in 1918 Vandenberg married Hazel Whitaker. They had no children.

From 1906 to 1928, he worked as a newspaper editor