[1] Born Edith Josephine Denning in Orlinda, Tennessee as one of eleven children on a family farm, her goal was to become a high school teacher and basketball coach, given she played the sport in high school.
[2] Because of the Great Depression and World War II, Denning had to get a job and save money to go to college.
[2] During World War II, she worked in the salvage department at the Vultee Aircraft plant in Nashville during the day, while going to the Watkins Institute (now part of Belmont University) for night school to learn how to be a secretary.
[1] When the CMA was formed in 1958, Denning (then known as Jo Walker) was hired as the first full-time employee to do secretarial duties for the first Executive Director Harry Stone, a former manager for WSM AM radio in Nashville.
[2] In the late 1950s, there were only 81 full-time country music radio stations in the United States.
[2] Other country music-related items established under Walker during the 1960s were the first Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, with a national fundraising drive that helped complete the physical museum in 1967 (the Hall of Fame itself was established six years earlier), and the creation of the CMA Awards in 1967.