well, my first SLR was a Practika MTL3 - but it wasn't so much a serious camera, as a camera shaped film shredding device. Every third film (on average) would end up with the sprocket holes torn off and having to unload the film in a dark-bag and try to manually rewind what I could into the canister, or, try and recover it and get it into the dev tank in bits. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately depending on how you look at it) it fell off a bivi ledge while I was climbing the Aig. Vert over in France. First bounce was around 1000ft below, second was another big bounce, third impact was into the snow of a glacier and it basically disappeared. So, there I was, on the climbing holiday of a lifetime, not much money, and no camera to record the event. Rang home thoroughly miserable, spoke to my dad and bless his heart, he just said "how much is that Canon AE-1 you were trying to save up for before you went away in the shops over there ??" - next day he went to the bank after his shift at the Pit, and paid enough money into my bank account that I could buy myself a AE-1 and the F1.4 50mm.
I only realised when I got home a month and a half later that he'd basically stayed in to put the money back into the bank for the next month or so... Fortunately, I started a proper paying job a couple of weeks after returning, and my first months salary cheque basically ended up getting cashed, dropped into an envelope with his birthday card.
So, yeah, the canon AE-1 was my first serious camera.
I never did have the heart to tell him that i'd been wittering on about getting a Canon A-1, not an AE-1...