Mary was born on 24th January, 1968, in Fairmount , West Viginia, a small coal mining town. Being " very hyper", Mary began acrobatic and ballet classes at 4 years old. By the age of 7, she was already training seriously in gymnastics. However, she knew that the opportunity to become a world-class gymnast did not exist in her small town. Therefore, in 1983, she moved in with a family who had a gymnast that in the same school that she had chose to attend -- Bela Karolyi's World Gymnastics. this school was the best known in the country and it was run by the Romanian coach famous for grooming Nadia Comaneci.
On an interview with Time magazine, Mary said :" I know that if I wanted to have a chance at a medal in the Olympics, I was not going to do it if I stayed at home. And I had worked all of those long, hard years."
Karolyi was even happier to work with Mary. He once told Newsweek that Mary was a greater champion than Nadia because she had all the psychological power to go through the most difficult movements without falling apart. Other than that, she had the ability to entertain the crowd and getting them involved through her eye contacts with the audience and her own high spirits.
America has fallen in love with this spiritual girl and Sports
Illustrated had named her the 1984 Sports Women of the
year. She was greatly honoured when her smiling face was graced
in front of the Wheaties Box -- an honour always reserved for
male athletes. 
Splendid on the balance beam..Mary Lou Retton
Story continues with the start of Career Highlights......
Career highlights
" You give up your childhood. You miss proms and games and high-school events, and people say it's awful ... I say it was a good trade. You miss something but I think I gained more than I lost."
You can read about Mary's comments at the 1996 Olympic Games at Atlanta at :