Marty "Slim" Rutgers was born on October 17, 1958 to Virginia Elizabeth Rutgers. Virginia's parents died in a house fire when she was eleven and the young girl was raised by her cousin, Bo Rutgers, and his wife, Merili, who had seven children of their own.

Virginia continued living with Bo and Merili until Marty was three years old. One night, neighbors reported hearing blood-curdling screams coming from the Rutgers home. Virginia and Marty left the next day, Bo and Merili claiming that Virginia had come across a snake in Marty's bed.

In exchange for a room, Virginia worked in a series of boarding houses, doing whatever no one else wanted to do. Virginia never let Marty out of her sight and called him her little shadow. She investigated the possibility of home schooling until administrators convinced Virginia to enroll her son in the public educational system.

Despite being twice the normal weight of his classmates, Marty appears to have been invisible. Miss Edna Truesdale, his first grade teacher and now principal of Oxford Elementary, has no memory of Marty although she can talk for hours about each of his contemporaries.

His marks in that and future years were "satisfactory" until he started receiving grades which were straight Cs. He was not mentioned by name in any of the yearbooks, outside of the listing under the obligatory class photos. He received neither honors nor demerits or much of any notice at all.

When Bo and his entire family were killed in an automobile accident at the mud-wrestling nationals held outside Atlanta, the house went to Virginia, their only living relative, who moved back there with Marty just before he graduated from high school. He resides there with her to this day.

Marty's first job was as janitor at the Southern Gentlewoman School of Expressive Ballet and Tap. He buffed the floors for seven years until a sting operation by the Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department led to the arrest of the school's manager on pornography charges. A flustered owner moved Marty into the front office and told him to start wearing a tie.

While watching the young students on the new closed circuit television system mandated by a court order, Marty noticed the teenage Barbara Dubois and he soon thought of nothing else. Marty introduced himself to Susan Dubois and said he could make her daughter a star. Susan jumped at the opportunity.

Marty made calls to talent scouts, casting companies, and modeling agencies. After talking to seven people, he decided that Barbara should compete in local pageants while she polished her image. When informed that Barbara had been winning local pageants for years, Marty promised Susan that Barbara would soon be winning better local pageants.

By the time the ink on the coaching contract was dry, Susan realized that Marty had nothing to offer. Susan desired to keep her mistake, and Marty, quiet. She drew up a second contract with the help of Barbara's sponsor, Sam Tuttle of Tuttle Confections, which stipulated that Marty would remain silent and deep in the background. With the alternative being charged with fraud, Marty agreed. Sam then announced that he had put up the money to hire the most expensive coach available, an eccentric recluse who had been behind some of the biggest names in the world.

It was around then that Marty's mother, Virginia, joined the Church of the Holy Rebirth and confessed publicly to sins of the flesh. According to her testimony before the two other members who made up the congregation, she had taken part in unnatural relations and had passed that corruption on to her infant son.

Several months later, Barbara suddenly told her mother that she didn't want Marty hanging around the Southern Gentlewoman School of Expressive Ballet and Tap any longer. Susan and Sam convinced the school to let Marty go and then hire him as a technical consultant at a weekly salary of one dollar, to be paid by Barbara's sponsor.

Marty applied for a job at a nearby catfish farm and was hired for the midnight shift. He holds the same position today.

Whenever Barbara won a pageant, the press tried to reach Marty but their messages were always returned by Sam. Marty was out of the country and unavailable for comment, presenting a lecture on the uses of blush at a conference in Switzerland or explaining advanced pageant theory to a Geisha school in Japan.

Since no one in the pageant world had ever seen him, everyone was shocked when he lumbered into the Yoknapatawpha County Literature Festival and announced that he was Barbara's coach.