Jack Kent Cooke
Entrepreneur
Known best as the owner of such American professional sports teams as the Washington Redskins, Los Angeles Kings, and L.A. Lakers, this Canadian-born businessman also arranged for the construction of both the FedEx Field (Landover, Maryland) and The Forum (Inglewood, California).
In his mid-teens, he worked as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. He went on to work for the Toronto Stock Exchange and subsequently bought several Canadian radio stations and news publications.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he purchased New York City's Chrysler Building, the Los Angeles Daily News, and numerous cable television stations.
His first marriage, to Barbara Jean Carnegie, lasted nearly fifty years but ended in divorce in 1979. Later, he was briefly married to Jeanne Maxwell and Suzanne Elizabeth Martin. Finally, he married a Bolivian woman named Marlene Ramallo Chalmers who had once worked as a transporter of illegal drugs.
His divorce from Barbara Jean Carnegie was settled by Los Angeles Judge Joseph Wapner (who later became a their television legal personality).