James Orsen Bakker was born January 2, 1940, in Muskegon, Michigan. He met Tammy Faye LaValley at North Central University in Minneapolis; the two married in 1961, left college, and worked as itinerant evangelists before joining Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. There Bakker helped build a children's program and, with the Crouch family, helped launch Trinity Broadcasting Network in 1973.
The following year, Jim and Tammy left to found their own ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina: the PTL Club, a daily television program built around an intimate, talk show style format rather than a pulpit. It grew quickly. By 1978 the program reached an estimated 13,000,000 viewers, carried nationally on the PTL Satellite Network, one of the first religious ministries to make full use of satellite cable distribution.
Bakker used that reach to build Heritage USA, a Christian theme park, hotel and residential complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina, that combined a Christian retreat with the amusements of a secular resort: water slides, a shopping promenade and a replica of the upper room. At its peak Heritage USA drew millions of visitors a year, rivaling Disney World and Great America among the country's most visited theme parks, an achievement built entirely on the audience PTL's broadcasts had assembled.