Christina Scott was born to James Edward and Annie (Wardrup) Scott in Tennessee in about 1916. She was one of six children, including Edward H., Mildred (Scott) Reynolds, Lawrence H., John Mauney, and Tommy G. She married Edward Haviland Coxe in 1947 and died on October 10, 1968.

Ted Malone (born Frank Alden Russell) was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado on May 18, 1908. The family moved to Missouri during his childhood, and he studied at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. After graduation, he accepted a job at the Kansas City radio station KMBC as an announcer and ukulele player. When a hillbilly act failed to appear one afternoon in the late 1920s, Russell's supervisor told him to go on the air and read poetry in order to fill the time. He was so embarrassed that he asked that his real name not be used, and so the announcer introduced him as Ted Malone. His reading of William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis, however, generated a flood of fan mail and Malone soon had his own radio program called Between the Bookends. CBS began broadcasting the show nationally in 1935 and it continued until 1955. Malone died of liver cancer in Stratford, Connecticut on October 20, 1989.

Harold Bell Wright was born on May 4, 1872 in Rome, New York to William A. and Anna (Watson) Wright. After a hard childhood and his mother's death, Wright moved to Missouri, where he began to preach. He married Frances E. Long in 1899, and they had three sons, Gilbert, Paul, and Norman. His church urged him to publish his first book in 1903. In 1908, he moved to California to focus on his writing. He wrote nineteen books during his career, including The Shepherd of the Hills, which were wildly popular and made him very rich. In 1916 he moved to Arizona for his health. In 1920, he divorced Frances and married Winifred Mary Potter Duncan. Wright died on May 24, 1944, in La Jolla, California.