Betty Rich was born Basia Kohn in Zdun´ska Wola, Poland, on June 10, 1923, the second youngest in a family of seven children. She spent the war years in the Soviet Union and after the war lived in Lodz, Poland, where she married her husband, David Recht. They fled the Polish Communist regime in January 1949 and arrived in Toronto later that year. Betty and David have two children and four grandchildren. David became a real estate developer and after his untimely death in August 1971, Betty took over management of one of his buildings and continued to work in mortgages and investments until her retirement.