 She graduated in 1962 from Jefferson High School in nearby Independence, Iowa and worked for a construction firm owned by her future husband, Bill Dailey, who was 15 years her senior.The two continued to work together, often spending 17 hours a day, seven days a week at work and married in 1964.In 1974, after asserting yet again that she could write a better romance novel than those she had read, Dailey's husband challenged her to prove it.