Cheryl Rae Tiegs (born September 25, 1947) is an American model and fashion designer. Frequently described as the first American supermodel, Tiegs is best known for her multiple appearances on the covers of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and Time magazine and for her 1978 "Pink Bikini" poster, which became an iconic image of 1970s pop culture. Early life Tiegs was born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, to Phyllis and Theodore Tiegs, an auto-assembly lineman turned funeral director. She and her family moved to Alhambra, California, in 1952. She is of German descent. As a senior at Alhambra High School, Tiegs posed for a swimsuit ad for bathing suit manufacturer Cole of California; the ad, which appeared in Seventeen, launched her career as a model. Although she enrolled as an English major at California State University, Los Angeles, she left college before her junior year in order to pursue her career. Career Tiegs's break as a model came when she was 17, after the editorial staff at Glamour saw the Cole bathing suit ad. Bypassing the traditional in-person meeting, Tiegs was booked on a shoot in Saint Thomas with Ali MacGraw, which resulted in her first Glamour cover. Later that same year, Tiegs made the covers of Seventeen and Elle. She subsequently appeared on the covers of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, among others. Tiegs was the first model to appear twice on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, but she significantly raised her profile in 1978, when she posed in a fishnet swimsuit. Tiegs additionally made the cover of People four times, and did three covers for Time, most notably for the "All-American Model" cover story in 1978. A year later, she was signed to a reported $1.5 million two-year contract with Cover Girl cosmetics, then the biggest contract ever. In 2004, Tiegs was inducted into the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues 40th anniversary "Hall of Fame", and was included on People's 2008 50 Most Beautiful People list, and Men's Health magazine's 2012 "100 Hottest Women of All Time" feature. Tiegs posed in 2001 in a bikini for the cover of More, and earned considerable praise for breaking age barriers related to fitness, fashion, and beauty. Tiegs met photographer Peter Beard in New York in 1978. In 1979, she traveled to Kenya with him on a photographic expedition to investigate the management and widespread destruction of African wildlife; their journey was