Mary Kaye Huntsman

Early life

Mary Kaye Cooper was born September 10, 1961, in Orlando, Florida, to an Episcopalian family. She is one of three daughters born to Mary Anne (Galloway) and Charles Floyd Cooper. When she was 14, in ninth grade, her family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. She attended Highland High School in Salt Lake City where she met Jon Huntsman, Jr. They were both active in student government. They started dating when they worked together at a Salt Lake City Marie Callender's Pie Shop.

While enrolled at the University of Utah, she worked as a dental assistant. She then transferred to Arizona State University, where she majored in family and consumer studies. Raised Episcopalian, she is a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Marriage and children

While working in Washington, D.C., Cooper ran into Jon Huntsman, Jr., who was part of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, and the couple began dating seriously. They married in 1983 and have seven children: Mary Anne (b. 1985), Abigail (b. 1986), Elizabeth "Liddy" (b. 1988), Jon III (b. 1990), William (b. 1993), Gracie Mei (b. 1999; adopted from China), and Asha Bharati (b. 2006; adopted from India).

First Lady of Utah

Huntsman served as first lady of the state of Utah from 2005-2009. According to Judith George, Director of the Office of the First Lady Governor's Mansion of Utah, "The way people treat their staff is a telling point and Mrs. Huntsman was never out of sorts... She just treated her staff with great courtesy and respect."

Philanthropy

Huntsman currently serves as the co-chair of National Cathedral School's Library Council, supporting the school's effort to build a state of the art library. She previously served as Honorary Chair of the Literacy Commission and the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She twice co-chaired the annual "Speaking of Women's Health" conference. She also spoke out about the youth problem of cyberbullying.

Huntsman is known in Utah for her dedication to children's issues and her passion for getting others involved. While serving as Utah's First Lady, Huntsman built on her experience with Bag of Hope, and started a program called Power in You, aimed at helping youth who had to deal with a variety of adversities. Power in You aims to give teens hope by providing them with inspirational stories from young adults and life improvement by directing them to numerous professional resources that will provide them with support for their challenges.

In 1997, Huntsman and her daughter Liddy, who at age eight was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, initiated the Bag of Hope program in Salt Lake City to help children and their families cope with juvenile diabetes. The therapeutic concept is for families who have experienced dealing with the disease to help newly diagnosed children and their families, and in helping to be emotionally strengthened themselves. Thus, at the time a child is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a child and parent who have experience with type 1 diabetes visit. The child is then presented with a bag of healthy goodies, a stuffed animal and helpful info. This is the beginning of a caring support system. Bag of Hope has grown to become a national program headed by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Huntsman is on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.

Wife of U.S. Ambassador to Singapore

Huntsman lived in Singapore from 1992-1993, while husband Jon Huntsman, Jr. served as United States Ambassador to Singapore.

Wife of U.S. Ambassador to China

From 2009–2011, she lived in China. Huntsman described her role as tending "to the well-being and morale of all the other embassy families".

Huntsman engaged in an attack against cigarette advertising in China. She shared with the Chinese her personal loss: her sister died of acute lung cancer at the age of 34. Noting that one-fourth of the population in China smokes – 66% of men and 10% of women – Huntsman implored the Chinese women to not succumb to the media campaign that was trying to seduce them to smoke.

2012 presidential campaign

Regarding her husband running for office in the 2012 presidential election, Huntsman said, "I am very comfortable. I feel very much at peace about it. At the end of the day it's his decision, and he knows we are 100 percent behind him. I believe in him." She was instrumental in making the strategic decision to headquarter her husband's 2012 Presidential Campaign in Orlando, Florida. She lived in Orlando until she was 14, and her parents and some extended family live there now. Mark Halperin of Time magazine says, "she has political gifts that rival her husband’s and a Southern/Sunshine State upbringing that will be a major asset."