Joe Manchin Parents: Meet Mary Manchin And John Manchin

Mary Manchin and John Manchin are the parents of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin.

Joe Manchin’s father was of Italian descent, from the town of San Giovanni in Fiore, in Calabria and his maternal grandparents were Czechoslovak immigrants.

John Manchin’s father, Joseph Manchin, owned a grocery store.

Mary Gouzd Manchin grew up near Farmington, in a little town called Rachel, with three sisters and four brothers. Her father, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, ran a grocery store.

Mary Manchin went to Farmington High School where she played intramural basketball and met John Manchin.

She graduated in 1941 and married John Manchin in August the following year, and had a big church wedding with a reception at the Cosmopolitan Club.

When they married, her husband John was stationed with the Army in Mineral Wells, Texas.

Following John’s discharge from the Army, he returned to Farmington to join the grocery business started by his father, an Italian immigrant, in the 1920s. He extended the grocery building to accommodate a furniture store.

A community icon, John Manchin served as mayor, fire chief and police chief. His brother A.J. Manchin was a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates and later the West Virginia Secretary of State and Treasurer.

Mary Manchin and John Manchin had five children; Paula works as an office manager for Enersystems Inc., Rocky runs a wholesale carpet business, Janet Thompson, a chef, has a catering business, John, a physician, runs the Manchin Clinic built by his father in the 1950s and Joe Manchin, a  U.S. Senator.

Joe Manchin’s mom Mary Manchin died in 2014, while his father John Manchin passed away in 2002.