Tamara Faye Messner was an American evangelist, singer, author, talk show host, and television personality. She gained notice for her work with The PTL Club, a televangelist program she co-founded with her husband Jim Bakker in 1974.
They had hosted their own puppet show series for local programming in the early 1960s; Messner also had a career as a recording artist. In 1978, she and Bakker built Heritage USA, a Christian theme park.
Messner garnered significant publicity when Jim Bakker was indicted, convicted, and imprisoned on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy in 1989, resulting in the dissolution of The PTL Club.
She released three autobiographies during her lifetime, I Gotta Be Me in 1978, Tammy: Telling it My Way in 1996 and I Will Survive and You Will Too! in 2003.
Tammy Faye Parents: Meet Rachel Fairchild and Carl LaValley
She was born Tamara Faye LaValley in International Falls, Minnesota, to Pentecostal preachers Rachel Minnie (née Fairchild; 1919–1992) and Carl Oliver LaValley.
Her parents were married in 1941. Shortly after she was born, a painful divorce soured her mother against other ministers, alienating her from the church.
Both of her parents remarried her mother to Fred Willard Grover, forming a large blended family, of which she was the oldest.