Sid Craig*

Sid Craig's mother came to North Dakota from Romania when she was 13. She immediately married and had a baby at age 14. Another son soon followed. They were Sid Craig's older half-siblings.

"My mother was a hard worker," said Craig. "She slowly brought over her entire family from the old country, her mother and her two brothers and a sister. She was working in a dress shop when she met my father, a gambler who had been able to save a small nest egg. My mother told him that if he quit gambling, married her, and bought her a dress shop in Canada, she would support him with her earnings, and he would never have to work again. My father accepted her offer."

After Craig's mother divorced her first husband, she and Craig's father moved to Vancouver, where Craig was born. When Craig was two, the family moved to Alhambra, California.

With dreams of her youngest child becoming the male version of Shirley Temple, Craig's mother managed to get him into a few movies. The child tap dancer was in six Our Gang comedies, also known as The Little Rascals series, and he performed in one movie with Bing Crosby. From age 13, he began working at regular jobs. He had a paper route and was a box boy in a grocery store.

During high school and junior college at California's Mt. San Antonio College, Craig worked at a nearby Pep Boys auto repair outlet. While a junior at California State University at Fresno, he paid for his tuition working as a part-time dance teacher at an Arthur Murray dance studio. He served in the U.S. Navy and then returned to manage the studio where he had taught. Craig began buying Arthur Murray studios and, along with some partners, eventually bought the entire company.

After moving to Los Angeles, Craig decided to sell his company and look for a new business in which to invest. In 1970, he acquired a partnership in a small chain of ladies figure salons. He formed a new corporation, Body Contour, Inc., and began to rapidly expand nationally. His first target was New Orleans, where he hired his future wife, Jenny, to manage that center. Soon, Jenny Craig was supervising all the centers in the South. After opening 200 outlets, and both having been previously divorced, Jenny and Sid got married in 1979.

In 1982, the Craigs sold their interest in Body Contour, Inc. and moved to Australia to develop a chain of weight-loss centers that emphasized health and long-term weight maintenance. Based on the theory that a healthy body could be achieved through nutritious eating, physical activity, and positive lifestyle changes, Jenny Craig, Inc. was born. Jenny Craig International became one of the world's largest weight-management companies.

Ready for retirement, the Craigs sold their company in 2006. When asked about their success, Craig said, "This Horatio Alger Award is probably one of the greatest measures of success and we're honored to receive it. We were successful with our business because we set achievable goals. Once we met one goal, we went on to the next. It's important to always have a goal in front of you."