Have you heard the one about the Mormon and the Muslim?

Politics makes strange bedfellows, but there may no odder couple in recent American political history than Orrin Hatch — the white, rock-ribbed conservative Utah Republican and Mormon — and Muhammad Ali, the most famous boxer ever, African-American icon and Muslim convert.


Yet the two had a friendship that lasted decades, up until Ali's death last week at age 74. Ali's wife, Lonnie, asked Hatch to speak at her husband's funeral Friday in Louisville, Ky., Ali's hometown.

Hatch said he was honored to do it.

"[Ali] helped me by being my friend," Hatch said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "I have to say that it was one of the great friendships that I've had in my lifetime."

The better you know Hatch, though, the less unlikely his bond with Ali actually becomes. The senator has struck up similarly quirky connections with ideological or political counterparts in the past. He and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — a liberal Catholic whose personal predilections were utterly unlike those of the teetotaling, non-smoking Utahan — became such close friends that Hatch even wrote a song for the Massachusetts Democrat when Kennedy got remarried in 1992.

Hatch is essentially an old school pol; he likes to look people in the eye and judge them for himself. It may not always be an accurate read, but Hatch trusts his own opinion more than what he reads or hears. And the one-time Mormon bishop's default position is that he must "love everyone," no matter who they are.

Hatch and Ali first meet in 1988, when Ali made an unannounced stop at Hatch's Senate office to thank him for helping a friend get confirmed to a federal post. Ali had seen Hatch on TV during the Iran-Contra hearings and the brutal Senate fight over Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court, and he apparently was impressed by the then second-term senator.

"I like Orrin. He's a nice fella," Ali told Insight Magazine in 1988. "He's a capable man and he's an honest man. And he fights for what he believes in."

Senator Orrin Hatch reflects on pictures taken with Muhammad Ali in his office. | Courtesy Sen. Hatch Office

"He just walked into the office one day and said, 'I like you and I want to support you,'" Hatch recalled Thursday. "I said, 'Gee, that means a lot to me.'"

Ali and Hatch — who did some amateur boxing himself — took to each other quickly. Ali ended up traveling to Utah and campaigning for Hatch's reelection that year. Hatch later brought Ali to meet his parents, and Hatch's mom made fried chicken for the three-time heavyweight champion.

The visit thrilled Hatch's parents and cemented the relationship between the senator and the boxer. "That probably bonded our friendship more than anything else we did, and we did some really good things together," Hatch said.

Further visits to Utah followed. Ali came to Hatch's annual golf tournament — he didn't play but crashed a golf cart one year — and the two went to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Ali handed out autographed pamphlets on Islam during that excursion.

Ali also once gave Hatch one of his (smaller) championship belts and a ring, but the Senate Ethics Committee made the senator return them. The two did hospital visits together and other events. In 1988, Ali attended the Republican convention in New Orleans as Hatch's guest. He wore a button proclaiming “Bush in ’88, Hatch in ’96.”

Yet it was more than a photo-op or a staged event. The two men were genuinely friends.

"My friend Ali had the greatest personality," Hatch said. "He had converted to Islam and I admired him for that, and standing up for his personal beliefs... He was as humble a man as I've ever met."

Hatch was fascinated by Ali's charisma, his ability to draw people to him with jokes or hugs or even some magic tricks he'd perform.

The 82-year-old Hatch remembered going with Ali to a fight in Las Vegas one time. Even a U.S. senator was stunned by the glamour of the crowd around Ali, who at one time was believed to be the best-known person on the planet.

"There were all kinds of professional athletes there. People that were idols to me," Hatch said of the crowd in Ali's penthouse suite. "I was almost blown away by it all."

When it came time to go into the arena for the fight, Hatch said Ali told him to grab his hand and not let go. "People are reaching over me, and elbowing me, they didn't know who the heck I was and didn't care," Hatch said. "They just wanted to touch the great champion. It was a lot of fun. It was something to see how he was treated."

Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1984, and the long, slow progression of the illness eventually limited his interactions with others, including Hatch. They would speak on the phone every year or so, but it gradually just became Hatch talking to Lonnie Ali.

"If there's a hero in this whole thing besides Ali it's Lonnie," Hatch said. "She loved him tremendously, took great care of him, watched over him... I love the woman, she's just a wonderful woman."