*** UPDATED AT 1:45 PM ET WITH COMMENT FROM RUBIO SPOKESMAN AND CORRECTS TIMELINE***

Quick: What religion is the son of Cuban exiles?

Answer: Roman Catholic, right? Right.

And also Mormon?

That’s right, Marco Rubio, the conservative senator on everyone’s short list for vice president, was a member of the LDS Church in his youth, BuzzFeed reports.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

When Rubio's family moved to a suburb of Las Vegas, many in his immediate family converted.

When Rubio's family moved to a suburb of Las Vegas, near cousins who were Mormon, many in his immediate family (but not his father) converted, including Marco. Rubio was baptized in the church when he was 8 and enthusiastically participated in the religion, according to the report.

Rubio spokesman Alex Conant tells First Read BuzzFeed is incorrect that "Rubio's steadfast participation in the Mormon church continued for several years—until his parents decided to move them to Miami." (*** UPDATE *** BuzzFeed has clarified: "The cousins said Rubio's participation in the Mormon church continued for several years, until his parents decided to move them to Miami—though Conant said the family left the church before leaving Nevada.")

In fact, Conant said, "He left the church when he was 11 or 12, he received his first communion in 1984 when he was 13, and they didn’t move back to Miami until the next year, in 1985."

BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins writes:

“The revelation adds a new dimension to Rubio's already-nuanced religious history—and could complicate his political future at a time when many Republicans see him as the odds-on favorite for the 2012 vice presidential nod. Vice presidential candidates are traditionally chosen to provide ethnic and religious balance to a ticket. Mitt Romney's Mormonism and Rubio's Catholic faith would already mean the first two members of minority traditions on a Republican ticket in American history. Rubio's Mormon roots could further complicate that calculation.”

NBC Latino reports that a former Rubio campaign staffer said this should have no bearing on whether the Florida senator's picked as VP and that he is a "devout Catholic":

“It should not affect it at all, that is totally unfair,” says Bertica Cabrera Morris, who ran Senator Rubio’s campaign in Central Florida and is a Senior Advisor to the Romney campaign, as well as a member of Romney’s Hispanic Steering Committee.

“Marco is a devout Catholic,” Cabrera Morris adds. “The first thing he did when he was confirmed as a Senator was have a Mass,” she adds. “His whole life is about faith.”

And Cabrera-Morris said:

"His family attended the church for a few years.  He went with his family.”

One of the cousins described Marco to BuzzFeed, though, as being “totally into it.”

“Over the years, he and his cousins frequented LDS youth groups, attended church most Sundays—often walking to the chapel because his mother didn't know how to drive—and latched on to the mainstream Mormon culture that was easily accessible in LDS-heavy Nevada.

“For example, when they were in elementary school, Rubio formed a singing group with Michelle and his sister that would put on performances for extended family. Their inspiration? The Osmonds, of course.”

But all that changed when the family was going to move to Miami.

“Rubio was just reaching high school age when his family relocated, and [cousin] Mo [Denis] speculates that their transition to an area with fewer Mormons likely took its toll.”

A Rubio spokesmantold BuzzFeed “that Rubio never requested to have his name removed from the LDS Church's records, which means officially, the church is likely still counting him as a member.”

And:

“While Rubio continues to identify as a Conservative Roman Catholic, he frequently attends a non-denominational Baptist church with his family in Florida. As his notoriety increases, both communities have sought to lay claim to the rising political star, with little resistance from Rubio himself. In fact, the politician has cooperated for profiles in both the Catholic Advocate, and the Evangelical World Magazine—granting pitch-perfect interviews to each.”

NBC Latino also talked to Ignacio García, a professor at Brigham Young University and a Latino Mormon. García said, NBC Latino writes, "it is not surprising that the Rubio family attended a Mormon church when they lived in Nevada."

"Unless you are hiding under a rock,” García said, “a Latino family in Nevada would have been approached by Mormons, who are welcoming to Latinos, especially immigrants.”

In fact, LDS Church leaders have told NBC News that Latinos are a growth area for the church and are more progressive on immigration policy than on other church policies, like abortion, for example.

In a Politico op-ed, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) aggressively pushes back against a Washington Post article charging that he might have embellished the story of his parents' migration to the U.S.

His beef with the article: Its suggestion that being associated to the post-revolution exile community was politically advantageous to Rubio.

That is an outrageous allegation that is not only incorrect, but an insult to the sacrifices my parents made to provide a better life for their children. They claim I did this because “being connected to the post-revolution exile community gives a politician cachet that could never be achieved by someone identified with the pre-Castro exodus, a group sometimes viewed with suspicion.”If The Washington Post wants to criticize me for getting a few dates wrong, I accept that. But to call into question the central and defining event of my parents’ young lives – the fact that a brutal communist dictator took control of their homeland and they were never able to return – is something I will not tolerate.

[snip]

The real essence of my family’s story is not about the date my parents first entered the United States. Or whether they travelled back and forth between the two nations. Or even the date they left Fidel Castro’s Cuba forever and permanently settled here. The essence of my family story is why they came to America in the first place; and why they had to stay.

Meanwhile, Dr. Andy Gomez, an assistant provost and senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies, emailed several political reporters to take issue with the Post's report.

The Washington Post seems to have very little understanding of the Cuban exile experience and what it means to be an exile. Marco Rubio’s family was forced to stay in America because they refused to live under a communist system. That makes them exiles. It makes no difference what year you first arrived. The fundamental Cuban exile experience is not defined according to what year Cubans left, but rather by the simple, painful reality that they could not return to their homelands to live freely.

Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo charges that it is the Washington Post -- not Marco Rubio -- that's doing the embellishing regarding when Rubio's parents came to the U.S., whether it was before or after Fidel Castro.

Regardless of when his parents left Cuba, they were exiles because they stayed in the US, specifically Miami, in a community where they soon felt they couldn't go back to their homeland. Though the story said his parents left for economic reasons, it's silent about the fact that the dictator before Castro, Batista, was so brutal that it made Castro look like a good alternative at first. (Insert debate over the fairness of the post-Castro Cuban Adjustment Act here).

The Post also says "the supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity." That's a stretch. The actual story of the "flight" is far less emphasized than the fact that Rubio's an Hispanic Republican, an immigrant and an exile.

Yet the implicit political narrative that made Rubio a GOP star, especially within the Tea Party, is that Obama's America resembles the Castro-led Cuba from which his parents were denied a better life. Just look at Rubio's CPAC speech in Feb. 2010:

Almost every other country in the world chose to have the government run the economy. They chose to allow government to decide which companies survive and fail. They chose to allow government to determine which industries are to be rewarded. But the problem is that when government controls the economy, those who can influence government keep winning, and everybody else just stays the same. And so in those countries, the employee never becomes the employer, the small business can never compete with a big business, and no matter how hard your parents work or how many sacrifices they make, if you weren't born into the right family in those countries, there's only so far you can go.

Now, we've had our excesses here in America, but for the better part of 234 years, Americans have chosen something very different, Americans chose individual liberty instead of the false security of government. Americans chose a limited government that exists to protect our rights, not to grant them.

Americans chose a free enterprise system designed to provide a quality of opportunity, not compel a quality of results. And that is why this is only place in the world where you can open up a business in the spare bedroom of your home.

That is why this is the only place in the world where a company that started as an idea drawn out on the back of a cocktail napkin can one day be publicly traded on Wall Street. That's why this is the only country in the world where today's employee is tomorrow's employer. And yet, there are still people in American politics who, for some reason, cling to this belief that America is better off adopting the economic policies of nations whose people who immigrate here from there.

Now, they have the right to believe whatever they want, but I do not have that option. You see, I'm one generation removed from a very different life. My mother was one of seven sisters born to my grandfather that I talked about earlier born to very humble parents who struggled every day. My father had it even tougher. His mother died when he was only six years old and the day after her funeral, he went to work selling coffee in the streets of Havana with his father and as best as I can tell, he worked from then on for 70 years.

They came to America with virtually nothing, no English, no money, no friends. Only the strong determination to provide their children all the opportunities they never had.

My mom worked as a cashier, a factory worker, a maid and a K-Mart stock clerk; my dad primarily as a bartender. Both of my parents worked jobs so their children could have careers and their lives were never easy.

How many nights did I hear the keys of my 70-year-old father at the door as he came home after another 16-hour day? How many mornings would I wake up and run into my mom who was just coming home from the overnight shift as a stock clerk at K-Mart?

When you're young and in a hurry, the meaning of those moments escape you, but as the years go by and as my own children get older, I understand it now. I realize that my parents were once my age, that they once had dreams -- that there were some things that they once wanted to accomplish. But because of where they were born, because of who they were born to, because they lost their country, their dreams never had a chance. So they came here to America and went to work and it became the mission of their lives to give us the chance to do everything that they could not.

And so now I know that every chance I have ever had and everything that I will ever accomplish, I owe to God, to my parents' sacrifices and to the United States of America.

My parents never achieved wealth or influence, but their hard work opened doors for their children that had been closed for them, and so to me, their story is the very essence of the American miracle. It is a story that is rare in the world, and yet, it is common here. It is common here because those that came before us chose to live in a free society. It is common here because those who came before us chose free enterprise. But now our leaders are asking us to choose something very different. They're asking us to abandon the things that separate us from the rest of the world.

Those that came before us made their choice and now, you and I must make ours.

Now, I must decide, do I want my children to grow up in the country that I grew up in or do I want them to grow up in a country like the one my parents grew up in?

Now you must decide. Do you want your children to inherit your hopes and your dreams?

Now Caputo is right here: In this speech, Rubio never once said -- explicitly -- that his family came to the U.S. after Castro. And Rubio said in a statement that his parents hoped, one day, to return to Cuba but couldn't because they didn't want to live under Castro's communism. And Rubio's family story is compelling, no matter when they came to the U.S.

But they first came here for a better economic life when Batista was in power, when Meyer Lansky was helping to build casinos in Havana, and when crony capitalism -- not communism -- was in place in Cuba.

As we wrote in First Thoughts this morning, the Washington Post story probably isn't a career-damaging piece. But it does complicate the narrative that his parents fled Cuba to get away from Castro's communism/socialism, which is being replicated in Obama's America.

They came here before then.

Freshman GOP Sen. Marco Rubio -- a rising star in the Republican Party -- has often invoked the story about his parents fleeing the Castro regime in Cuba.

But an investigative piece in the Washington Post notes that Rubio's parents came to the United States (and gained residency here) more than 2 1/2 years before Castro came to power in Cuba.

[A] review of documents - including naturalization papers and other official records - reveals that Rubio's dramatic account of his family saga embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio's parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2½ years before Castro's forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year's Day 1959.

The Post adds:

Rubio’s office on Thursday confirmed that his parents arrived in the United States in 1956 but noted that “while they were prepared to live here permanently, they always held out the hope and the option of returning to Cuba if things improved.” They returned to Cuba several times after Castro came to power to “assess the situation with the hope of eventually moving back,” the office said in a statement.

Here are two TV ads (here and here) that Rubio aired during his 2010 Senate run highlighting that he was the son of exiles.

*** UPDATE *** Rubio has released this statement:

“To suggest my family’s story is embellished for political gain is outrageous. The dates I have given regarding my family’s history have always been based on my parents’ recollections of events that occurred over 55 years ago and which were relayed to me by them more than two decades after they happened. I was not made aware of the exact dates until very recently.

“What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s story are completely accurate. My parents are from Cuba. After arriving in the United States, they had always hoped to one day return to Cuba if things improved and traveled there several times. In 1961, my mother and older siblings did in fact return to Cuba while my father stayed behind wrapping up the family’s matters in the U.S. After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return.

“They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism. That is an undisputed fact and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.”