Yes have always
been there in my life.
I have two older brothers -- 6 and 8 years older than me. Thus, when I was in elementary school they were teenagers, and teenagers in the late 70s at that. Yes at that time were huge--the quintessential arena rock band of the 70s in fact. The dizzying lineup changes kept occuring, but always Jon Anderson and Chris Squire doing their thing.
My brothers had the Yes posters in their room (they shared a bedroom, until my oldest brother got kicked out), the t-shirts, the albums, and sometimes they would let me sit in the room with them (never when they were getting high, though) and listen to the music. They would doodle the groovy Yes logo on their notebook covers. They would explain to me how Yes was music that was about something, man. They had seen the band a few times--on the Tormato tour when they had the cool rotating stage, on the Going For The One tour (hey, that dude's naked on the cover!).
When I myself got to high school, 90125 had just been released. I of course listened to it, and got into it, because, hey, it was Yes. My older brother told me it was crap--"The lyrics aren't about anything! Where's Steve Howe!"--but I didn't listen. At least he and I could agree that sitting in a dark room with headphones listening to Close To The Edge was about as perfect as music could get.
I still like Yes a lot, and my upbringing means that I like the old stuff as much as the newer stuff (okay, yeah, Big Generator and Talk are mostly big stinkers, but Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe, Keys To Ascension and The Ladder, and 90125 are very good) but Yes is a band I'm in to because my older brothers were. They doesn't even listen to much of that stuff anymore--my oldest brother in particular has gone to the dark side largely, listening mostly to bland pop and --gasp--country (okay, he does live in Oklahoma), but somehow in some sort of strange fraternal devotion I still love the stuff.