Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus has died at 95

• Bernie Marcus, who co-founded The Home Depot with Arthur Blank, has died at the age of 95.

• Marcus and Blank started the home improvement chain in Atlanta in 1978.

• The former CEO was active in the company until 2002, and was a political and philanthropic donor.

Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, has died at the age of 95.

The company confirmed Marcus' death on Tuesday. Along with Arthur Blank, Marcus opened the first two Home Depot stores in Atlanta in 1979.

Marcus served as CEO from the company's inception until 1997, and he was active in the company until 2002. "We owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Bernie," a Home Depot spokesperson said.

Here's how Marcus and Blank built Home Depot.

Marcus was born in 1929 in Newark, New Jersey.

He was the youngest of four siblings, and they and his Russian Jewish immigrant parents lived in a tenement when he was growing up.

"My parents, an immigrant couple struggling to make ends meet in Newark, taught me that generosity was a universal imperative no matter one's station in life," he told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. "You gave – if not from your wallet then your time and talent. It's why I was serving on boards of nonprofits when I couldn't find two nickels to rub together."

Marcus dreamed of becoming a doctor, but ended enrolled in a pharmacy program at Rutgers University in New Jersey instead.

Marcus said he would earn extra money during those years by selling freezers door-to-door, graduating in 1954.

After college, he worked several manufacturing and retail jobs, rising to corporate leadership at Handy Dan Home Improvement, where he met Arthur Blank.

The now-defunct Los Angeles-based company fired Marcus, then the CEO, and Blank during a corporate restructuring in 1978. The pair would remain lifelong friends, even as their lives and opinions diverged.

After the two were fired, Marcus and Blank founded Home Depot in 1978, with Marcus serving as the company's first CEO.

The first two Home Depot stores opened in the metro Atlanta area in 1979 and were the first one-stop-shops for DIY home improvement.

The concept wasn't an immediate success.

Marcus and Blank lost half the money they invested in the company during the first year the stores were open, according to Bloomberg.

But the company caught steam, and Home Depot went public in 1981.

Now, more than 45 years after its founding, Home Depot has more than 2,300 stores in North America.

The company now employs over 465,000 workers and made nearly $153 billion last year, making it the 23rd largest US firm by revenue, and nearly twice the size of its nearest home improvement rival, Lowe's.