Laura Taylor was born in New Haven, Connecticut and spent her childhood bouncing between New York and Ohio to follow her father’s career. Robert Cox, her father, was a businessman who attended Syracuse University on the Government-Issued Bill. Her mother, Lillian Cox was a concert pianist and college music professor. At the age of seventeen, Taylor received a scholarship to attend the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Powell. Unfortunately, Dr.

Harry Sax was born May 01, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois, the son to first generation American Jews. He spent his childhood on Chicago's Southside, where his family belonged to a progressive Reform congregation. After graduating from Hyde Park High School, he continued his education at Indiana University. In college, Sax was a member of the Zeta Beta Tau Jewish fraternity, participated in a singing group, and was a cadet in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

James Earl "Jim" Rogers was born on on September 15, 1938 and moved with his family to Las Vegas, Nevada from Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1953. Rogers graduated from Las Vegas High School in 1956 and eventually went on to earn degrees from the University of Arizona in accounting and law, a masters of law from the University of Southern California in 1963, and his doctorate of law from the University of Arizona in 1998.

“My goal with [pageantry] was: I just want to have as much impact as possible within the community, and then, self-servingly, it’s an amazing networking opportunity; you meet tons and tons of people, and so that’s what I did.”