Reverend Daniel Quan Nguyen was born, one of five children, on July 15, 1941, in Tay Ninh Province (east of Saigon), South Vietnam. His parents were farmers and his father died when he was just a year old. Reverend Nguyen attended high school and university in Saigon, studying science and law, then becoming a high school math teacher. From 1968 to 1975, he served as an infantry commander in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnamese Army). He was stationed with the Fourth Battalion Regiment of the Seventh Division in the Mekong Delta.

Reverend Suong Ngoc Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American living in Biloxi, Mississippi, serving the Vietnamese community, there, many of whom work in the fisheries system. Nguyen was born, one of four children, in 1944 in Cambodia (to Vietnamese parents), but was raised in Tay Ninh Province in South Vietnam. Her grandfather was a leader of the Cao Dai religious group in Tay Ninh Province. Her father sold goods in a market and disappeared one day in 1946 during the French-Viet Minh war.