Televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner

He was sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and conspiracy before being paroled in 1994. He was also defrocked by the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal denomination to which the Bakkers both belonged.

Tamara Faye LaValley was born March 7, 1942, in International Falls, Minn. Raised by her mother and stepfather, and living with seven siblings, she endured very humble circumstances. The family lacked indoor plumbing.

It was also a strict religious home. A prohibition from wearing makeup as a teenager spurred her desire to flaunt it when she became rich, she later said.

She spoke in tongues as a child and developed an interest in becoming a missionary. In 1961, she enrolled at an Assemblies of God school in Minneapolis now known as North Central University.

At college, she met Jim Bakker, a onetime Michigan disc jockey. They wed two days after their first date, dropped out of school and became wandering revival preachers.

In 1965, Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network in Portsmouth, Va., used the Bakkers to fill in for a preacher on leave. They were an immediate hit with their Christian hand puppet show, and Jim Bakker also hosted "The 700 Club" Christian talk show.

The Bakkers were popular with their audience and in 1972 left for California to start the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul and Jane Crouch. A dispute with their partners over control prompted the Bakkers to leave, and Trinity soon took its place as one of the most powerful Christian networks in the world.

In 1974, the Bakkers started their PTL Network in an abandoned furniture store in Charlotte. Almost immediately, Jim Bakker began planning Heritage USA. PTL became a periodic target of Federal Communications Commission investigations but continued to harvest a reported $10 million a month until the ministry collapsed in 1987 amid the corruption charges.

When it was all over, Tammy Faye Bakker was left with what she claimed was $1,000. She sold off her vast wardrobe and said she netted thousands of dollars every month from a clothing resale shop in Orlando. She later sold wigs and positive-thinking videocassettes.

Mrs. Bakker, by then Mrs. Messner, wrote a memoir, "Telling It My Way," and tried unsuccessfully to return to television as a talk-show host. Her co-host for one effort was JM J. Bullock, an openly gay former sitcom actor. They both sang the theme song for their show, "We're not what you'd expect, we're a crazy, goofy duet . . ."

Mrs. Messner was presented as a gay icon in the 2000 documentary "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," in which she said, "How sad that we as Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth, and we who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them."

The film's directors, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, spoke of her "over-the-top camp sense that we relate to." She appeared at gay pride festivals nationally and spoke warmly of the support she felt from homosexuals.