American activist and public relations adviser Mary Cheney was BOTD in 1969. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she was the youngest daughter of Republican political couple Dick and Liz Cheney. She studied at Colorado College and the University of Denver, and became a public relations manager for a baseball team. In 2001, her father was elected Vice President under the George W. Bush administration, significantly boosting her family’s public profile. Openly gay since forever, Mary joined a Republican Unity Coalition in 2002, arguing that support of gay rights should be a “non-issue” for the Republican Party. She resigned from the Coalition to become the Republican Party’s head of operations for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. During the campaign, Mary’s lesbianism became a hot-button issue, despite her parents’ refusal to discuss the subject in interviews. Mary remained silent during the Bush administration’s restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples, drawing widespread criticism from the LGBTQ community. In her 2006 memoir, she expressed her opposition to the Republicans’ policy. She is credited with encouraging her father to support same-sex marriage, which he eventually did (though only after leaving office) in 2009. In 2013, she made headlines by publicly criticising her sister Liz’s opposition to same-sex marriage, during the latter’s Senate campaign. She also worked for Coors Beer, leading a gay-friendly campaign to reverse a national boycott of their product. Cheney and Poe married in 2012, and have two children together.