John Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Colorado. His mother, a lifelong community activist and environmentalist, descends from the Forbes family and his father was in the Army Air Corps in World War II. While growing up, his parents taught him about service, responsibility, and Catholicism. He traveled a lot as a youth because his father was a Foreign Service Officer in the Eisenhower administration.  

His first marriage ended in 1988 and he has two daughters (Alex and Vanessa) from that union. Alex recently completed film school and Vanessa is pre-med. When they were teenagers, he took them to Vietnam to help them understand what he had lived through and to teach them about the world. 

His second wife, Teresa Heinz, has three sons (John, Andre, and Christopher) by her deceased husband, GOP Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, who died in a plane crash shortly after celebrating their 25^th wedding anniversary in 1991. She has an estimated fortune of $600 million. Teresa Heinz Kerry, a philanthropic innovator, environmental visionary, and women’s advocate, was born in Mozambique, East Africa and is fluent in several languages. She attended the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Geneva. She received her B.A. degree in romance languages and literature. Shortly after, she worked for the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. In 1990, she was introduced to John Kerry by her husband at the time, Senator Heinz. In 1992, she met John Kerry again at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In 1995, they married on Memorial Day Weekend. She has received many awards and ten honorary degrees for her many works. She received the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism last year and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. 

They also have one grandchild and a German Shepherd named Cym. 

His father and John F. Kennedy are his two great heroes.