Joseph’s parents immigrated from Slovakia in the 1880s and lived in Pittsburgh, Pa. As a youth there Joseph worked as an elevator man at an apartment house and as a stock clerk for a printing press manufacturing company. He was an Army veteran of WWII.

Mamie lived most of her life Nanty Glo, Pa. She retired from the Ebensburg State School in 1979. In about 2000, she moved to Tallmadge, Oh. and last lived in Hartville, Oh.