David Barry

He got married to Ann Shelnutt, but the couple later got divorced.

He then married Beth Lenox in 1976. The couple had a son, Robert. Beth and Barry divorced in 1993.

He is currently married to Michelle Kaufman, the sports writer for Miami Herald. Their daughter Sophie was born of this marriage in 2000.

Dave Barry was born to David Barry, a Presbyterian minister. He was educated at Wampus Elementary School - Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School.

He later joined the Pleasantville High School. In 1969, he received a degree in English from Haverford College.

In 1971, he started working as a general assignment reporter for the ‘Daily Local News’ in West Chester, and reported on civic and government issues. A couple of years later, he was appointed as the city editor. Around this time, he wrote humour columns and cultivated his own style of writing.

Following a brief stint as a copy editor at the Associated Press’ Philadelphia bureau, he joined Burger Associates where he taught effective business writing.

The humour in his guest column for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1981 garnered him an invitation to write regularly for ‘Tropic’, the Sunday magazine of ‘The Miami Herald’. The column was soon syndicated nationally.

In 1984, Barry and other editors at the ‘Tropic’ started the annual puzzle hunt called the ‘Tropic Hunt’. The same year, he published ‘Babies and Other Hazards of Sex’.

He also formed the band the ‘Urban Professionals’ which performed the ‘Tupperware Song’ at the Tupperware headquarters in Florida.

He sang alongside Stephen King, Amy Tan, Al Kooper, Warren Zevon, and Roger McGuinn in the ‘Rock Bottom Remainders’. ‘Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude’ is a best-seller record of the band’s tour.

His prequels to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan stories were written in collaboration with Ridley Pearson including ‘Peter and the Starcatchers’, ‘Peter and the Secret of Rundoon’ and ‘The Bridge to Never Land’ etc. earned him great fame and recognition.