Eleanor "Sis" Daley

Daley was born Eleanor Guilfoyle in 1907, in the south side Chicago neighborhood of Canaryville, to a large Irish family. She was the daughter of Honora Bridget "Nora" (McAuliff) and Patrick H. Guilfoyle, an insurance agent.[5] She met Richard J. Daley at a local ball game. Her brother, Floyd, who was a friend of Daley's, introduced the couple. Their first date was attending a Chicago White Sox game. Daley was a graduate of Saint Mary High School and was a secretary at a local paint company. After a six-year-long courtship, during which her future husband finished law school, they married on June 17, 1936. The Daley's lived in a modest brick bungalow at 3536 South Lowe Street, close to where both had grown up.[6] They had three daughters and four sons, in that order. Their eldest son, Richard M. Daley, was mayor of Chicago from 1989 through 2011. The youngest son, William M. Daley, served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 1997-2000. Another son, John P. Daley, is a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

Daley was a quiet woman who seldom spoke out on political matters. One exception was her criticism of Boss, the 1971 Mike Royko biography of Mayor Daley portraying the mayor in an unfavorable light. Always fiercely protective of her husband and family, she uttered sharp criticism of the book, and this led to one local retailer leaving the book off its shelves.

In 1972, developers had obtained the city's tentative approval of a proposal to tear down the old Chicago Public Library downtown and replace it with a modern office tower. Asked her view of the proposal by a Chicago Tribune reporter, Sis Daley observed that she had used the library as a child, and said of the demolition, "I don't think that would be nice." Soon thereafter, a city commission unanimously voted down the project.

Of Sis, the mayor told the press: "She doesn't speak for me and I don't speak for her. She is able to speak for herself very well, whatever she has on her mind." It was said that although her husband might have controlled every aspect of the city's government, she controlled everything inside their house.