Dorothy Mengering

Mengering lived all her life in Indiana. She married Letterman's father, a florist named Harry Letterman, in 1942. He died in 1973, and she married structural engineer Hans P. Mengering, who died in 2013. Letterman had been on the air for years, and had made ironic celebrities out of dozens of nobodies, before he thought to bring on his mom. Once famous, she put out a cookbook, 1996's "Home Cookin' With Dave's Mom," that included recipes such as "Dave's Fried Baloney Sandwich" and the secrets behind many of the pies she had baked for the show.