Baker's stepmother was also a Republican congresswoman, and Baker's grandfather was a judge.
Baker eventually married Joy Dirksen, the daughter of former Senate Minority leader Everett Dirksen. Baker was widowed in 1993 when Joy Baker died of cancer. In December of 1996 he married Nancy Kassebaum, a retired Republican Senator from Burdick, Kansas. The extended family of Baker and Kassebaum combined includes six children and 12 grandchildren.
Baker attended the University of the South (in Sewanee) and Tulane University. He enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve and was discharged as a Lieutenant, junior grade, after serving in World War II. He studied law at the University of Tennessee and earned an LL.B. in 1949.
Early Political Career
For 15 years Baker practiced law in Knoxville, Tennessee, and held other business and financial interests as well. He first ran for the United States Senate in 1964, on a conservative Republican platform, but he lost to a moderate Democratic opponent. He learned a lesson from the defeat and revised his stance to a more moderate platform before making his second attempt at the Senate in 1966.
This strategy worked. He won the 1966 senatorial election in Tennessee.
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