Personal Life
The youngest of three sons of Jean-Guy and Pierrette Lemieux, he was raised by his stay-at-home mother, and his father, who was a construction worker. Lemieux was born on the same day as Patrick Roy, in the province of Quebec, just 200 kilometers apart.
Off the ice, Lemieux smoked a half a pack of cigarettes daily. He finally gave it up, perhaps due to Hodgkin's Disease.
Mario Lemieux married Nathalie Asselin on June 26, 1993. They have four children: Lauren (born April 1993), Stephanie (born 1995), Austin Nicholas (born 1996) and Alexa (born 1997). Austin was born prematurely, weighing just two pounds, but he is perfectly healthy today. The family lives in the affluent Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley.
Lemieux has opened his home to young Penguins stars such as Marc-André Fleury and Sidney Crosby until they settled into the Pittsburgh area, as he did with Jaromír Jágr following the 1990 NHL Draft when he lived in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He is a naturalized American citizen and on March 30, 2007, Lemieux, a registered Republican, contributed $2,300 to Democratic U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign fund. In the past, he has also made contributions to the reelection fund of Republican former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum.
On June 17, 2009, Lemieux was given the honorable title Knight from Quebec Premier Jean Charest.
On September 3, 2010, Lemieux was given the Order of Canada from then-Governor-General Michaëlle Jean.
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Famous quotes related to personal life:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)