John Gray, PhD, is a well-known figure in the sphere of relationship guidance, most notably for his bestselling work, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Hailing from Houston, Texas, where he was born in 1951, Gray’s background and career trajectory is unusual and varied:

[Gray] is one of seven children of a well-to-do oil executive who died in 1985 after hitchhikers robbed him and locked him in the trunk of his car; his mother ran a spiritual bookshop and knew Heaven's Gate cultist Marshall Applewhite. Both parents went to Stanford, and John was expected to do so as well. But in 1969, when he was a high school senior, he went to a Transcendental Meditation seminar, threw himself into this new way to find a natural high, and quickly caught the eye of TM's founder and leader, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who in the late 1960s was guru to the Beatles and other celebrities. ‘I think he saw a little bit of himself in me,’ Gray says, ‘and I wanted to be like him when I grew up’” (Gleick, Elizabeth and Valley, Mill. “Tower of Psychobabble.” Time.com).

Gray ultimately became Yogi’s personal assistant. Critics have argued that Gray’s degrees are not substantive.