Early years, education, and early career

Pawlenty was born on November 27, 1960, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and raised in nearby South St. Paul, one of five children of a milk truck driver and a housewife. When he was 16, his mother died of cancer. Pawlenty took to ice hockey and played on his high school's junior varsity squad.

In 1983, Pawlenty received a B.A. degree in Political Science at the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts. In 1986, he graduated with a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School. In law school, he met fellow student Mary Anderson and one year later they married, settling in Eagan, Minnesota.

As a practicing attorney, Pawlenty's first job was as a labor law attorney at the firm Rider Bennett, where he had interned during school. Later he was Vice President for a Software-as-a-Service company Wizmo Inc.