He is the widower of Christa McAuliffe, one of the victims of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

He attended Marian High School in Framingham, where he met his future wife Christa Corrigan.

[2] McAuliffe continues to serve as a founding director for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.

He has two children, Scott and Caroline, with his first wife, Christa; they were nine and six, respectively, when she died as a result of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

In early 1992, he married Kathleen E. Thomas, a reading teacher for the Concord School District, and mother of two children.