SALT LAKE CITY-Marjorie Pay Hinckley, wife of the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Tuesday after falling ill in January while on an overseas trip. She was 92.
Marjorie Hinckley died about 5 p.m. at her home, surrounded by her husband and other family members, church spokesman Dale Bills said. He attributed her death to “causes incident to age.”
The Hinckleys had been married 67 years. They have five children and 25 grandchildren.
The couple attended the dedication of a Mormon temple in West Africa in January. She fell ill on the return trip to Salt Lake City.
Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, 93, disclosed his wife’s illness Sunday at the church’s general conference. It was the first such conference she had missed in 46 years.
“I guess the clock is winding down, and we do not know how to rewind it,” Hinckley said. “It is a somber time for me.”
“We were on our way home, and she collapsed with weariness,” he said.
“She’s had a difficult time ever since.”
Marjorie Hinckley was born in Nephi to Phillip LeRoy and Georgetta Paxman Pay.
She graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City in 1929 and began working for Owens Illinois Glass Company as a secretary.
The Hinckleys married in 1937 in the church’s Salt Lake temple.
“The family that I grew up in consisted of one brother and four sisters and a mother and father who were absolutely devoted to the Church,” Marjorie Hinckley told Brigham Young Magazine in 1996. “It was a prayerful home. We prayed about everything, and I mean everything-that we wouldn’t burn the soup.”
“The really wonderful thing about my childhood was that the stake president lived across the street from us, and his son was Gordon B. Hinckley. So I was aware of him. By the time I got to high school, I knew there were two sexes, and I noticed him,” she told the magazine.
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Bills said he did not expect a statement from the Hinckley family Tuesday night, and that no services would immediately be held.
She was an avid reader, and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Utah Valley State College in April 2001 and an honorary doctorate in Christian Service from Brigham Young University in April 2000.
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