His first wife, Joy, who died in 1993, after a long battle with cancer, was the daughter of Senator
Everett Dirksen. His second wife,
Nancy Kassebaum Baker (formerly a fellow senator, from Kansas, who served using the name Nancy Landon Kassebaum), whose father,
Alfred Landon, was Governor of Kansas from 1933-1937, and the 1936 Republican nominee for President of the United States.