Jacqueline Joyner—named, by her grandmother, for Jacqueline Kennedy—was born on March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Ill. By the time she was 14, Joyner had won the first of four National Junior Pentathlon championships and prompted her brother Al to begin training for the triple jump. The two later competed together for the United States.

Jackie Joyner graduated in the top 10 percent of her high school class and attended the University of California at Los Angeles on a basketball scholarship, playing as a basketball All-American and as part of the UCLA track team. It was UCLA assistant coach Bob Kersee—whom she married in 1986—who persuaded her to focus on the heptathlon in international competition. A hamstring injury hobbled her in the 1983 world track and field championships in Helsinki, Finland, but she won the silver medal in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She received a bachelor's degree in history from UCLA in 1985.

Joyner gained her world's-best reputation in 1986 with the Goodwill Games in Moscow. In 1987 she tied the world's record in the long jump at the Pan American Games and won the heptathlon and long jump gold medals at the Rome World Championships. Among her many honors are the Jesse Owens award (1986 and 1987), the Sullivan award as best amateur athlete in the United States (1986), the Track & Field News Athlete of the Year title (1986), the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year (1987), Ebony magazine American Black Achievement award (1987), the Jim Thorpe award (1993), and the Jackie Robinson “Robie” award (1994).