Joyce C. Hall was raised in Nebraska by his mother. His father left home when Hall was nine. In 1910, Hall headed to Kansas City to seek his fortune. He was armed with two shoeboxes full of picture postcards he hoped to sell to dealers throughout the Midwest. After only a few years, the postcard business had expanded enough to allow his bothers Rollie and Willliam to join him and open a specialty store for postcards and stationery. Then Hall decided that selling Christmas cards with envelopes might be more profitable. He decided to call his company Hallmark, a play on his name and the word for quality.

The word hallmark dates back to the year 1300, when gold and sil- were marked for quality at Goldsmith's Hall in London. Coins of quality received a "Hall mark." The first Hallmark card appeared in 1916. It featured the greeting "I'd like to be the kind of friend you are to me." One of the innovations that made Hallmark so successful, however, had nothing to do with the sentiments contained in the cards. In 1936, Hall introduced display cases that featured rows of cards that the customer could browse. Previously, cards were purchased by asking a clerk to choose an appropriate card.

When Hall died in 1982, the company he had founded was worth $1.5 billion. These days, more than 10 million Hallmark cards are sold each year "All I was trying to do was make a living," Hall once said. "In those days, if you didn't work, you didn't eat. And I like to eat."