Marilyn Phillips was born on September 9, 1951, in Idaho Falls, Bonneville County, Idaho, six weeks premature. She was the second of three daughters of Don William Phillips and Helen Janiel Swenson Phillips, and grew up in Ammon, Idaho, in the house on Avocet Drive where her parents lived for over sixty years.

Marilyn first encountered Norman Harker as the former boyfriend of her cousin Beverly Phillips. The two met properly at a pizza restaurant in Idaho Falls, likely during Norman’s senior year at Idaho State University around 1969. During the fall semester before their marriage, Marilyn drove from Idaho Falls to Pocatello every Wednesday to see Norman. They married on March 28, 1970, in a church building on Avocet Street in Idaho Falls, and were later sealed at the Idaho Falls Temple — on the same day as Van and Deanne Harker’s sealing.

Before their first child was born, Marilyn worked as an instructor at an Elaine Powers fitness studio in Pocatello. She experienced severe illness during all five of her pregnancies. Her children are Lisa (born October 1970 in Pocatello), Paul (May 23, 1973, Salem), Kevin (May 24, 1976, Salem), Keri Ann (September 11, 1979, Salem), and Eric (December 31, 1984, Vancouver).

During the Salem years Marilyn was called as Stake Primary President when the Salem stake was divided, a calling she held for a little over a year before the family’s move to Vancouver in August 1980. In Vancouver she served as Relief Society president of the Vancouver First Ward — simultaneously with Norman’s service as bishop beginning in April 1984. She was pregnant with Eric at the close of her Relief Society presidency.

Marilyn wrote a personal autobiography in February 2003 for an English 220 course. That document, which covers her life from birth through 2003, is one of the primary corroborating sources for the Harker Family Archive.