My name is Stephen Bianco and I live in Grapevine, TX.  I am a 66-year-old widower and father of two children:  a 33-year-old daughter named Shelby Brooke who lives in Frisco, TX where she is working in management after completing her college degree cum laude and a 28-year-old son named Austin who lives in Denton, TX and works in restaurant management

I grew up in Darien, CT as one of five sons to Charles and Marie Bianco, both of whom were second-generation Italians from southern Italy whose parents came to the United States as teenagers in the early 1900’s.  I have an identical twin brother named Rick who lives in Washington D.C and works in the mortgage industry, a younger brother named Robert who is retired and lives in Florida and an older brother named Charles who is retired and lives in Flower Mound, TX  I had another older brother named Donald who died of leukemia before I was born at the age of 7 years.  My mother Marie passed away 6 years ago at the age of  97 years.  My father died when I was 13 years old and I began working then to earn money to go to college.  I primarily worked as a caddy at the Darien Country Club from 13 years old until I graduated college in 1976.

I attended Rollins College in Winter Park, FL where I majored in Business and minored in Economics.  After college, I lived in Madrid, Spain for a year in order to learn Spanish and to gain some experience that would support my goal of working in the international business field.  When I returned to the U.S in 1977, I procured a position with Avon Products in their New York City office in Manhattan.  I started working toward a Masters in Marketing at Fordham University in NYC at night after work and earned my Masters in July of 1979, one week before being transferred to the Kansas City office of Avon Products in order to garner valuable branch operations and sales support experience.

Kansas City was a wonderful city to live in.  It is the place where I became a Christian and then met and married Angela and where we adopted both of our children.  Angela and I were married in 1982, and we lived there until 1990 when we moved to Dallas for my new job at Mary Kay Inc.  It was a difficult time for Angela for the first 18 months in Dallas as she was an artist and a musician and she loved the four seasons of Missouri along with the rolling hills and tall trees, none of which seemed evident in Flower Mound where we purchased a new home.  We were also introduced to fire ants at this juncture and it was a burning introduction to say the least.  However, what is truly remarkable about Texas is the ease with which one makes strong and lasting friendships, and the people here eventually won both Angela and I over.