Helen Walton: Who is Sam Walton’s wife?

Helen Walton was the wife of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.  They got married on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1943. She was the richest American and the eleventh-richest woman in the world at one point in her life.

Helen was born in the Oklahoma town of Claremore. She was the daughter of Hazel Carr Robson, a housewife, and Leland Stanford Robson, a successful banker/rancher.

She was the valedictorian of her Claremore, Oklahoma, high school class and a finance graduate of the University of Oklahoma at Norman.

Sam and Helen Walton started their first retail store, a Ben Franklin “five and dime,” in Newport, Arkansas, in September 1945. They relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1950, and founded the first Wal-Mart in 1962.

Sam Walton credits her with coming up with the idea of a profit-sharing arrangement for the company’s employees. When Sam Walton died in 1992, Helen and their four children inherited Wal-Mart.

Helen Watson was head of the Walton Family Foundation when a $300 million grant was made to the University of Arkansas in 2002, the largest donation ever made to a public university in the United States.