 While she and her attorney-husband, Carlos M. Zaffirini, Sr. (born 1943), were attending UT, they worked in the late 1960s on the staff of District 21 State Senator Wayne Connally, brother of Governor John B. Connally, Jr. During this time, serious attention was focused on establishing a university in Laredo.Soon the satellite campus of Texas A&M University - Kingsville, then known as Texas A&I, opened in Laredo.In 1970, Laredo State University was launched with Billy F. Cowart as the president, and in 1993, Senator Zaffirini secured legislation creating the four-year Texas A&M International University on a separate campus off the Bob Bullock Loop.