Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Marco Rubio has earned himself plenty of name recognition as he mulls a possible presidential run in 2016. He's delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address and he's made a name for himself on immigration reform issues.
But there's plenty the general public probably doesn't know about the Cuban-American. Here are seven highlights from the pre-politics life of Rubio.
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1. Born in 1971 to a 44-year-old father and a 40-year-old mother, Rubio formed a natural connection with his grandfather, Pedro Victor Garcia. The two spent many afternoons discussing politics on the patio. "He asked a lot of questions you wouldn't expect from a kid that age,"
his brother, Mario Rubio, said. "He spent a lot of time with my grandfather, just sitting there and talking."
2. Rubio was an undersized football player at South Miami High School, but he was good enough — or tenacious enough — to land a scholarship to Tarkio College in Missouri. But he transferred after one season, and though he, in future years, had the opportunities to catch passes from NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino and University of Florida legend Tim Tebow, Rubio's football career stalled after just one collegiate season.
3. During his childhood, Rubio moved to Las Vegas with his family, and at the age of about 8, he was baptized as a Mormon. Though he later left the church, Rubio was an enthusiastic member of the Church of Latter Day Saints.
"He was totally into it,” a cousin told BuzzFeed. “He’s always been into religion. Football and religion. Those were his things.”
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4. A few years after he was baptized as a Mormon, Rubio returned to the Catholic Church, and he took his first Communion at the age of 13 on Christmas Day in 1984. “He really convinced the whole family to switch religions,” a family member said. “He’s very vocal so he convinced them all to become Catholic.”
5. One reason the family's conversion of Mormonism didn't last for long, Rubio has said, is because his father — who worked as a bartender at a Las Vegas casino — wasn't interested in the religion. "As a family we were never fully immersed in it because my father didn't buy in, so there are many intricacies to the faith that we never really got involved in,"
Rubio told Christianity Today in 2012.
6. Though Rubio never got the chance to play in the NFL, he ended up marrying into an NFL family anyway. That's because his wife, Jeanette Dousdebes, once was a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins. Rubio was a supportive partner, oftentimes cheering on Dousdebes from the stands.
Said Rubio to ABC News: "I can tell my kids that one of their two parents used to work on an NFL field, but it was not their dad."
7. Rubio doesn't mind mixing humor into his speeches, particularly if he is reminiscing about the late 1970s and all the ills the U.S. population faced, including the aftermath of President Richard Nixon's resignation and the Jimmy Carter presidency.
Said Rubio in one speech: "Most troubling of all we had to overcome disco and bellbottoms and the Bee Gees."
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