Ruth solomon jesse owens wife

By the time Jesse Owens traveled to Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games, he was already married with a baby daughter. Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon had met at Fairmount Junior High School in 1930 in Cleveland when he was fifteen and she was thirteen.

They dated steadily throughout high school, and Ruth gave birth to their first baby daughter, Gloria, on Aug. 8, 1932.

Five years later, in 1937, the couple’s second daughter, Marlene, was born, and Beverly, the youngest daughter, was born in 1940.

Gloria and Marlene both later attended Ohio State, and Marlene became OSU’s first African-American Homecoming Queen in 1960.
Jesse supported his new family at first with various odd-jobs, such as pumping gas at a Cleveland gas station, while Ruth quit school to work in a beauty parlor in Cleveland, where she lived with her parents.

It was the first of many long periods of time spent apart over the years, as Owens traveled first for athletics, then to speaking engagements and philanthrop