Robert Kraft

Robert Kraft met Myra Nathalie Hiatt while still a college student and immediately fell in love with her. She was the daughter of the businessman and philanthropist Jacob Hiatt. The couple got married in June 1963. Theirs was a happy marriage that produced four sons. Unfortunately Myra died of cancer in 2011 leaving Robert devastated.

After a year of his wife’s expiry, Kraft began dating actress Ricki Noel Lander.

Robert Kenneth Kraft was born on June 5, 1941, in Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. into an Orthodox Jewish family. His father, Harry Kraft, was a dress manufacturer. His parents wanted Robert to become a rabbi on growing up.

He received his primary education from the Edward Devotion School and moved on to Brookline High School from where he graduated in 1959. He was a good student and the senior class president in high school. He loved sports but was unable to participate in any of them as it interfered with his after-school Hebrew studies and observance of the Sabbath.

He received a scholarship to attend Columbia University. At Columbia he joined Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity and played running back and safety on the school's freshman and lightweight football teams.

He fell in love while still at the university and got married in June 1963. He graduated from Columbia later the same year and went on to pursue an MBA from Harvard Business School, earning the degree in 1965.

Robert Kraft began working with the Rand-Whitney Group, a Worcester-based packaging company run by his father-in-law. Hard working and intelligent, he found much success as a professional and was soon able to gain control of the company through a leveraged buyout in 1968.

He also had an interest in politics and was elected chairman of the Newton Democratic City Committee. He gave a thought to running against Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district Representative Philip J. Philbin in 1970 but decided not to.

An enterprising individual, it did not take Robert Kraft long to found his own business, International Forest Products, a company trading in physical paper commodities, in 1972. This venture too proved to be a great success.

By the 1980s he started investing the proceeds from his businesses in various ventures. He invested in New England Television Corp which gained control of WNAC-TV, and became a director of the board in 1983. The station was then renamed to WNEV-TV and he was named president of the corporation in 1986.

A long time football fan, he purchased the professional American football team, New England Patriots, in 1994 for $175 million. At the time of the purchase, the Patriots had won just 19 games the previous five seasons, and people, including his own wife questioned this decision.

Robert Kraft is the founder of the Kraft Group which is a private holding company comprised of companies in the paper and packaging industries, sports and entertainment, and private equity investing including Kraft Sports Group, Rand-Whitney Group, International Forest Products and more than 30 private equity investments.