Dorothy Benham

Dorothy Kathleen Benham, born on December 11, 1955, in Edina, Minnesota, is an American beauty pageant titleholder and Broadway performer. She held the titles of Miss Minnesota in 1976 and Miss America in 1977.

Benham grew up in Minneapolis, where she attended Southwest High School and graduated in 1973. During her school years she sang in the choir. She is the daughter of Archie and Mary Dorothy Tuomi Benham and has three siblings: a sister named Totiana and two brothers, Sean and Archibald.

Her performing career extended to the Broadway stage, where she appeared in Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989, a Tony Award-winning musical production. She also performed on the televised religious program Hour of Power, broadcast through the Crystal Cathedral.

In her personal life, Benham has been married four times. On May 26, 1978, she wed Russell Anderson, an NHL defenseman who played for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The two had four children together: Adam, born in 1980; Russell, born in 1982; Ben, born in 1985; and Mia, born in 1988. Her second marriage, to Michael McGowan on December 31, 1991, produced two children, Madeline, born in 1994, and Richard, born in 1995. She subsequently married Paul Shoemaker on August 28, 2001; that marriage ended in divorce in 2011. On February 22, 2022, she married Luis Martin Perez.