[1] His older brother, Lewis, talked him into buying the Colorado Springs Telegraph and later got him to work as the business manager of the St. Joseph Dispatch in Missouri.

[6][7][8][9][10][11] His son, Edward Gaylord, inherited controlling interest but not complete ownership of The Daily Oklahoman and other family assets worth $50 million in 1974.

Educated in business at Stanford University, Edward L. increased the family fortune by a factor of forty, to $2 billion at his death in 2003.

Gaylord's tenure, it became unabashedly partisan after Edward L. became its publisher; in Oklahoma some critics would satirize the paper as "The Daily Disappointment," and the Columbia Journalism Review dubbed it "The Worst Newspaper in America" in 1999.

The Gaylord family have frequently provided selected philanthropic contributions, including major support to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, and have given the University of Oklahoma contributions totaling over $50 million, resulting in a large proportion of the buildings on campus being named after one family member or another.