Rubio went to a Mormon church as a kid

From The Miami Herald, a little-known detail about Sen. Marco Rubio’s personal story:

When Marco was 8 years old and living in Las Vegas, the Rubio family attended a Mormon church for a few years.

It’s a tidbit just released by the publisher of his memoirs. It’s also a piece of the history of Rubio, a rising party star and one of the best-known Hispanic officials in the GOP, that comes as a surprise.

UPDATE: The incomparable Molly Ball points out via Twitter, “Rubio’s cousin Mo Denis is Mormon D state sen. in NV.”  Rubio is a practicing Catholic.

Rubio’s spokesman, Alex Conant, fills out the history a bit, saying, “His family attended Mormon church in Vegas starting when he was around 8 years old and then returned to the Catholic Church when he was around 11. He received his first communion in Catholic Church in Las Vegas in 1984 and subsequently was confirmed and married in a Catholic Church.”

He regularly goes to Catholic Mass in Washington and Miami, per Conant, and in the past few years “he and his family have also occasionally been attending services at an evangelical Protestant church in Miami.”

UPDATE II: Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins has a well-reported piece about Rubio’s childhood experiences with the LDS church:

By the cousins’ account, the Rubios were introduced to Mormonism in the late 70′s, after moving into a house in the Denises’ neighborhood. The two families’ mothers had always been close as sisters growing up in Cuba; now they were building congruent lives in the same middle-class suburb of Las Vegas.

Mo said the Denises — who had converted to Mormonism years earlier — wasted little time in sharing their religion with the Rubios.

“Right when they moved here, they started going to the church activities with me,” said Michelle, who grew close to Rubio and his sister, Veronica. “Our parents didn’t let us hang out with nonfamily members too much. They were pretty strict.”

It wasn’t long before the Rubios were sitting down with Mormon missionaries, reading the Book of Mormon and preparing for baptism. It’s unclear how many in the family ultimately converted; the Denises recalled only the baptisms of Marco, Veronica, and their mother, Oria. But one family member definitely abstained: Marco’s father, Mario.

An overworked bartender at Sam’s Town Hotel and Casino, Mario had little use for a religion that promoted a strict code of moral conduct that seemed at odds with the way he made a living, said Michelle.

“He liked to smoke and drink,” laughed Michelle. “Plus, I don’t know if he was ever around too much. He was always working.”