Early Life and Family
Dole was born Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford in Salisbury, North Carolina, to Mary Ella (née Cathey; 1901–2004) and John Van Hanford (1893–1978).
She attended Duke University and is a sister of Delta Delta Delta. She graduated in 1958, and followed that with post-graduate work at Oxford in 1959. After Oxford, she took a job as a student teacher at Melrose High School in Melrose, Massachusetts for the 1959–1960 school year. While teaching, she also pursued her master's degree in education from Harvard University, which she earned in 1960, followed by a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1965. She is an alumna of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and was recognized for being their leading orchid grower several times.
Dole first met her future husband, Senator Bob Dole, in the spring of 1972 at a meeting arranged by her boss and mentor, Virginia Knauer. The couple dated, and she became his second wife on December 6, 1975 in Washington National Cathedral. They have no children, though she is stepmother to Bob's adult daughter Robin from his first marriage of 24 years, which ended in divorce in 1972.
She was the lay leader at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. before joining National Presbyterian Church in 1996.
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