Grayce Evelyn Blake was born on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan to Rev. David A. Blake Sr. and Grace Rogers Blake. She attended Jones School and Ann Arbor High School, where her 1948 senior yearbook noted her nickname as simply "Blake". Grayce Blake was an active member of the Bethel AME Church choir, following in the footsteps of her mother, as well as several high school singing groups. Following graduation, she left for Washington D.C. and became a student at Howard University.

Audrey Monagan was born in Ann Arbor in 1941, and grew up in a close-knit, predominantly black neighborhood on North Fifth Ave. She remembers attending Bethel AME Church with her grandparents, spending time at the Dunbar Community Center, and helping raise her younger siblings. She attended Jones School and Pioneer High School before working for General Motors, where she was an inspector for eighteen years. Mrs. Monagan has been married to her second husband, Philip, for 48 years.