Christine Cannell Taplin Whitney was born to Gertrude Jane Cannell Taplin and Alfred Eric Heeley Taplin on June 29, 1945 in London.
Until 1955, the family lived in chilly postwar England and Germany, but then moved to the tropical skies and bright flowers of Maracaibo, Venezuela, where Eric was a transportation executive for Royal Dutch Shell. In 1959, when Eric and Jane divorced, Jane, Christine and Geraldine moved to the United States. Christine completed a year of high school in Newberg, Oregon, and graduated from Riddle High School, in Riddle, Oregon before attending Linfield College in McMinnville.
After college, Christine began a graduate degree at U.C. Berkeley before marrying Larry Whitney in 1967. She finished her M.A. and worked in San Francisco until deciding to become a lawyer. She graduated from U.C. Hastings College of the Law in 1976. After practicing in Sacramento for nine years, Christine accepted the post of Director of Legal Affairs for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida in Jacksonville, Florida. She subsequently practiced with the renowned firm of Holland & Knight, named for Florida's wartime governor, and opened her own practice in 1993.
She met her true love, Claude Moulton, in the Miami office of Holland & Knight in 1992. They were married in the basement of the Cook County Courthouse, Chicago, in December 16, 1997.
