Background
Mary Engelbreit was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, United States, North America.
Mary Engelbreit was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, United States, North America.
Engelbreit attributes her beginnings in art to getting eyeglasses in second grade and being able to see details of the world around her clearly for the first time. After meeting her first artist, at age 9, she became convinced she needed her own studio space, which her mother helped set up in the family linen closet. Interested in art throughout her school years, Engelbreit eventually began to work for a local advertising company, Hot Buttered Graphics.
Hoping to work as an illustrator of children"s books, she shopped her portfolio around New York City without success.
At the suggestion of one art director, she began working in greeting cards. Her first nationally distributed greeting card featured a malapropism that played off an old saying, "Life is just a bowl of cherries", showing a girl looking at a chair piled high with bowls, with the legend: "Life is just a chair of bowlies." She began in Street.Louis.
She also sold her greeting cards, and it was a hit in University City. lieutenant was called: "..a vast empire of cuteness!"
Engelbreit married Philosophy Delano, a social worker, in 1977.
In 1986, they formed their own company, presently called Mary Engelbreit Studios.
The couple has had two children: Evan, born 1980. And Will, born 1983. Evan died in June 2000. Engelbreit has a star on the Saint Louis Walk of Fame.
She began her career by designing and creating greeting cards, for which she eventually became famous.
