One person who didn't find the ad campaign too funny at first, however, was the senator's wife of 42 years, Joyce Bennett. She wasn't thrilled about "people making fun of my husband," the senator said. Knowing that the humor came from her own family and wasn't mean-spirited eased her worries, he added. "She's happy with it now."

Family is the most important aspect in the life of Bennett, whose father's name graces the exterior of the downtown Salt Lake federal building. And Bennett, aside from being three-fourths of a foot taller, is the spitting image of the late Wallace F. Bennett, who served four terms in the U.S. Senate. His family started Bennett Paint & Glass Co. and worked in setting up Dinwoody's furniture store and ZCMI.

Born in Salt Lake City on Sept. 18, 1933, Bennett was in the same high school class (East High, 1950) as former Sen. Jake Garn and former U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen. In college, he was the University of Utah student body president and a member of Skull and Bones and Delta Phi. He served an LDS mission in Scotland before marrying Joyce McKay, an accomplished flutist and the granddaughter of LDS Church President David O. McKay (Bennett is the grandson of Heber J. Grant, another former LDS Church president). They have six children and eight grandchildren.

Bennett's professional career — and his bank account — is highlighted by his involvement with the Franklin Institute, a once-small Utah day-planner company he, as CEO in the mid-1980s, helped transform into an international time-management phenom firm. He was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Inc. Magazine.

Before that, Bennett worked his way around Washington, D.C., as a press secretary, a liaison for the Transportation Department, and a lobbyist for Howard Hughes' interests. It was at that PR firm, however, that Bennett involuntarily became involved with Watergate, even to the point he was identified by some as being "Deep Throat," the source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose stories on the scandal are credited for bringing down President Richard Nixon.

An associate at Bennett's firm, E. Howard Hunt, planned the Watergate break-in of the office of the head of the National Democratic Committee (Larry O'Brien, coincidentally Bennett's predecessor at Hughes Tool Co.) in 1972. Bennett's firm, Mullen, became subject to federal investigation, leading some, including Newsweek and Rolling Stone magazine, to claim the ordeal was really a CIA operation planned by Bennett. He has denied all claims that he had anything to do with Nixon's resignation or was the "deep throat" source.

But the Watergate fallout was too much, forcing Bennett to move his family to Los Angeles, where he directed public relations for Hughes' Summa Corp. From there, he bounced from one executive job to another, even doing a stint with the Osmonds' entertainment group in Orem, until hooking up with Franklin founder Hyrum Smith in 1984.