Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Wife of Gordon B. Hinckley and co-protagonist of Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — “a companion and an equal,” not a backdrop. The book casts her humor as the thing that carried the family through every crisis (“the only way to get through life was to laugh your way through it”), and Gordon credited it directly: “Gordon’s sense of humor got us through all the crises in our lives,” and conversely her buoyancy “was like an elixir” to him. Her temperament is the household version of Hinckley’s optimism — her basic philosophy that “things always worked out somehow” mirrors his personal motto, “Things will work out.”

She is also the source of the book’s most-quoted parenting framing: she and Gordon taught “the difference between principles and rules” so their children “felt free to make decisions” against a few fundamental principles rather than an exhaustive rulebook. Marjorie’s own line — “I tried to never say no if I could possibly say yes” — captures the trust-first approach. She knowingly chose to be “second in his life” after the Lord, and “that was okay”; all five children married in the temple, an outcome Gordon called “a great tribute to their good mother.”

Context: Marjorie Pay Hinckley (1911–2004) was the wife of Gordon B. Hinckley, the 15th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a General Authority’s wife she became a beloved public figure in her own right, known for her wit and her remarks at meetings worldwide.

Where this appears

• Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — co-protagonist; her humor, optimism, and “principles not rules” parenting are central threads of the biography