I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, the youngest child of an industrial engineer and a journalist. After graduating from Lawrence High School I attended Kansas State University for one year, then moved to Dallas, Texas, where I earned my Associate in Applied Arts degree at Wades Business College.

After college, I moved to Southern California where I worked for K-Mart as a management trainee before taking a job at Fluor Engineers and Constructors to work and study to become an electrical design engineer. It was at this time when I decided to explore the world of beauty pageants. Although I won the title of Miss Pacific Coast, I quit after a year and married a restaurant manager.

My husband and I moved back to Kansas where my two older children, Matthew and Katie, were born. In 1987, we settled in Reno, Nevada, before I divorced my first husband. As a mother of two children and newly single, I got a job as a secretary at a local brokerage, where I met a stockbroker. We married in 1989 and I gave birth to my youngest daughter, Elizabeth. In 1990, my marriage ended in divorce. I was again a single mother, this time with three children to feed and clothe.