“In high school, at the age of 15, Barker met and fell in love with his future wife, Dorothy Jo Gideon. Their first date was on Nov. 17, 1939, when he took her to see an Ella Fitzgerald concert. Barker said they “were never separated from then on” – until her death in 1981 from lung cancer.”
Married to the same woman, his only love and never remarried after her death.