Sister Hinckley came from a strong LDS ancestral background that formed her own deep faith. Her maternal grandfather, George Paxman, died at age 24 of injuries sustained while working on the Manti Temple. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Goble Pay, walked, as an 11-year-old girl, across the Great Plains with a handcart company during the Latter-day Saint migration to the West.

Serving the LDS Church herself, she started teaching Sunday School at age 17 and held a variety of church assignments in Young Women, Primary and the Relief Society.

President Hinckley first noticed her while both were growing up in the Liberty Stake's 1st Ward in Salt Lake City. He lived across the street from her home, and in 1930, he asked her out on their first date. It was the start of an association, occasional at first, then interrupted by Elder Hinckley's LDS missionary service to Great Britain, that continued in the years that followed and was shared in many parts of the world.

Following his mission and during his employment at LDS Church headquarters, they were married in the Salt Lake Temple on April 29, 1937. Elder Stephen L Richards, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, performed the ceremony. They then moved into their first home, a family retreat in East Millcreek, at that time a quiet, rural area of the Salt Lake Valley.

In 1941, they built a home nearby, clearing the area and planting numerous trees, shrubs and flowers.

"Marjorie is a real Latter-day Saint," a longtime associate of Sister Hinckley said in an LDS Church News interview. "She always has time to help those in need of help. I have never heard her say an unkind word about anyone or to anyone. She makes all young people welcome in her home. She is an outstanding mother and teacher."

"I first saw her in Primary," President Hinckley said, reflecting on his marriage. "She gave a reading. I don't know what it did to me, but I never forgot it. Then she grew older into a beautiful young woman, and I had the good sense to marry her.

"She was beautiful, she was light-hearted and happy, she was bright, and at the same time she was serious about the important things."

"The greatest judgment he has ever shown in his entire life," President Boyd K. Packer, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, says, "is the judgment he showed in marrying Marjorie Pay. You cannot know him unless you know her — the tender, guiding, patient influence she has been in his life and in that of their children."