Marjorie Pay Hinckley, 92; Wife of Mormon Church President

Marjorie Pay Hinckley, wife of Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Tuesday. She was 92.

She died about 5 p.m. at her home in Salt Lake City, surrounded by her husband and other family members, church spokesman Dale Bills said. He attributed her death to “causes incident to age.”

Hinckley had been in failing health since January, when she fell ill on the couple’s return to Salt Lake City from Ghana, where they attended the dedication of a Mormon temple.

She was unable to attend last weekend’s LDS General Conference in Salt Lake City -- her first such absence in 46 years.

Gordon B. Hinckley told conference attendees Sunday that his wife was ill and he asked for their prayers.

“I guess the clock is winding down, and we do not know how to rewind it,” Hinckley, 93, said in his remarks at the General Conference. “It is a somber time for me.”

“We were on our way home, and she collapsed with weariness,” he said of the January trip. “She’s had a difficult time ever since.”

Marjorie Hinckley was born in Nephi, Utah. She graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City in 1929 and began working for Owens-Illinois Glass Co. as a secretary.

The Hinckleys married in 1937 in the church’s Salt Lake City temple.

“The family that I grew up in consisted of one brother and four sisters and a mother and father who were absolutely devoted to the Church,” Marjorie Hinckley told Brigham Young magazine in 1996. “It was a prayerful home. We prayed about everything, and I mean everything -- that we wouldn’t burn the soup.”

“The really wonderful thing about my childhood was that the stake president lived across the street from us, and his son was Gordon B. Hinckley. So I was aware of him. By the time I got to high school, I knew there were two sexes, and I noticed him,” she told the magazine.

The couple would have marked their 67th wedding anniversary April 29.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by five children, 25 grandchildren and at least 29 great-grandchildren.