Mario Cuomo: A timeline

June 15, 1932: Born in Queens, the son of South Jamaica grocery store owner Andrea and Immaculata Giordano Cuomo, both Italian immigrants.

1953: Graduates summa cum laude from St. John’s University.

1954: Married Matilda N. Raffa. They have five children.

1956: Graduates from St. John’s University School of Law.

1975: Appointed Secretary of State by Democratic Gov. Hugh Carey.

1977: Runs for New York mayor, but lost the Democratic primary to Ed Koch.

1978: Elected lieutenant governor with Carey.

1982: Elected governor, defeating Koch in the Democratic primary and Republican Louis Lehrman in the general election.

1984: Emerges as a national political figure with his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in San Fransisco, where he offered a defense of liberalism and rebuttal of President Ronald Reagan’s policies.

1986: Re-elected governor with 65 percent of the vote.

1990: Re-elected to a third term.

December 1991: With two chartered planes ready to take him to New Hampshire to register for the presidential primary, decides to stay in Albany and not run for president.

1994: Loses governorship to Republican state legislator George Pataki.

2012: As a private attorney, mediates a $303 million lawsuit that accused the New York Mets ownership of profiting from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Jan. 1, 2015: Dies in Manhattan.