Michael "Mike" Ilitch Sr. (July 20, 1929) is an American entrepreneur, founder and owner of the international fast food franchise Little Caesars Pizza. He owns both the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League, and Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball.

Ilitch has been at the center of Detroit's downtown redevelopment efforts, purchasing and renovating the Fox Theatre and relocated his business headquarters there. A first generation American of Macedonian descent, he is married to Marian Bayoff Ilitch.

A graduate of Cooley High School in Detroit, Michigan, Mike Ilitch entered the U.S. Marine Corps for four years. After his return home to Detroit, the Detroit Tigers offered him $3000 if he would sign to play baseball, and Ilitch had a four-year minor league career from 1952-1955. Ilitch played mostly second base for the Tigers', New York Yankees', and Washington Senators' organizations in the Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League, Cotton States League, and Florida International League. He was forced out of his playing career due to a knee injury. After leaving baseball, Ilitch started a pizza business in 1959. With the help of his wife, Marian, the Ilitches opened Little Caesars Pizza Treat in Garden City, Michigan, the first of what would become many thousands of restaurants through franchising.

Marian Bayoff Ilitch (born January 7, 1933) was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, the daughter of Macedonian immigrants. She met her future husband Mike Ilitch in 1954 when the two went on a blind date arranged by his father. A year later, they were married. They have seven children. The Ilitches founded Little Caesars Pizza in 1959 and have expanded their interests to include restaurants, entertainment, sports and gambling.

One of the original investors in Detroit's MotorCity Casino, Marian Ilitch realized an opportunity to purchase total interest in the casino resort complex from various minor stakeholders and Mandalay Resort Group in 2005. Michigan gaming laws prohibit one company from owning more than one Detroit casino property. With Marian Ilitch as owner, MotorCity Casino is reportedly one of the largest independently owned casino enterprises in the United States—likely the largest woman-owned casino in the U.S.[3]

Marian Ilitch and a partner, Michael J. Malik, Sr., have pursued other casino gambling interests outside of Detroit, and from coast to coast. Among them: the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians and Little River Casino Resort in Manistee, MI. Ilitch has partnered with the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Hampton Bays, New York to develop a recent casino in New York. Ilitch also a partnered with Barwest, LLC and Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians to develop casinos in Barstow, California.

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

Denise Ilitch is a Detroit-area businessperson, lawyer, and member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan. Ilitch was rumored to be a Democratic Party candidate for Governor of Michigan in 2010, after having met with the White House in early January to discuss a potential run, though she later declined to run.

Denise Ilitch is a 2nd generation Macedonian American, the daughter of Mike Ilitch and Marian Ilitch. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1977, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Detroit in 1980. After receiving her law degree, Ilitch was the vice-president of Little Caesar Enterprises from 1981 to 1992, during which time the business moved to downtown Detroit from Farmington Hills, sparking other investment in Detroit. She also later served as president of Ilitch Holdings, a privately held business that manages the Detroit Tigers, Detroit Red Wings, Little Caesars, the Fox Theatre, and other Detroit-area businesses. She is the owner and publisher of Ambassador magazine, and the owner of Denise Ilitch Designs. Ilitch is also “Of Counsel” at the law firm Clark Hill, where she advises clients in the areas of business practice, corporate law, and government policy. In May 2009, she was named as co-chair of Detroit mayor-elect Dave Bing's transition team.

David "Dave" Bing (born November 24, 1943) is the mayor of Detroit, Michigan, a businessman, and a retired American professional basketball player who played 12 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), primarily for the Detroit Pistons (1966–75). He was a seven-time All-Star. After retiring, he founded the Bing Group, which was one of the largest steel companies in Michigan.

His #21 was retired by the Detroit Pistons, and in 1996 he was named as one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players of all time.

He was elected mayor of Detroit in a special election on May 5, 2009 and was sworn in on May 11, 2009. Bing won the full-term mayoral election on November 3, 2009, defeating challenger Tom Barrow.

Bing was born and raised in northeast Washington, D.C., as a son of a bricklayer. At age five, Bing accidentally poked his left eye with a nail of a wooden horse that he improvised. With the family unable to afford an eye operation, the eye healed on its own but left Bing with fuzzy vision since then.