After dating for about a year, they began discussing marriage, but she insisted that they find a church first. As Tania recalls, "I expressed my strong belief that we had to be on the same path spiritually if we were going to get married and have children. I grew up with parents who are still married today, after 39 years, because they put the Lord in the center of their marriage."

Beck resisted organized religion, and his research did nothing to change his mind. "Please, have you read the Council of Nicaea?" he remembers saying at the time. "It doesn't make sense. I went to one church in which the pastor was an atheist. He actually told me, 'You know, I don't believe in God; but if there was (a God), we should serve him."' Beck agreed to make a church tour anyway.

Each Sunday, Beck, Tania and his two daughters from his previous marriage, Mary and Hannah, visited a different church, searching for one in which they felt comfortable. A longtime friend and Mormon, Pat Gray, called and told Beck, "Are you really going to all these churches? You owe it to me to go to my church one time."

Beck recalls, "I told him, 'I'm never going to be a Mormon. You people are freaks.' But he said I owed it to him to go, and we did."

After attending an LDS service, one of Beck's daughters asked him, "Could we go back there next Sunday? I feel so warm inside." Beck agreed. "We didn't see anything that drove us crazy," he says — but he maintained a heavy dose of cynicism. "OK, we'll go back to that church until they say something that hacks off Dad," he said at the time.

He remembers that one day in Sunday school class the teacher asked for questions. "I thought, watch this; we'll be in the car in 15 minutes," says Beck. "I asked them, 'Where is Gandhi? He seems like a guy Jesus would hang with. He helped people. He didn't wear pants for a long time. Anyone in class like to answer that?' They told me where he was. It made perfect sense. I was stunned."

Six months later Beck was baptized, in October 1999.

"Next to marrying my wife," says Beck, "it's the best thing I've ever done."

Looking back, Beck likes to say he never had a chance. "The lord has been stalking me my whole life. Every step of the way there would be a Mormon in my path. They were the first ones I would meet at work and gravitate to. I am God's most impertinent child. The Lord has been so close and visible in my life because I am too stupid to get it like everybody else. He's going to be worn out by the time I die."

The day after his baptism, after being turned down for years by agents, Beck received a call from an agent wanting to represent him. One thing quickly led to another, and Beck, who had wanted to switch to the talk-show format, landed a talk show in Tampa, Fla.

Ratings soared.