Anyone's Tolkien journey not start with The Lord of the Rings?

I was wondering how typical or otherwise my adventure of reading JRR Tolkien's works is. I guess there will be few posting on here whose experience predates the publication of The Lord of the Rings but had read The Hobbit before then. Yet there are many of my contemporaries and younger who differ from me in having read The Hobbit first - but The Silmarillion? I began with The Lord of the Rings in 1975 when I was 16 and I read The Hobbit immediately after. These books I have read at least annually ever since but more often recently. By 1977 I had read most of the short stories and I'm still reading them today. In 1977 or 1978 I bought The Silmarillion as soon as I heard that it existed (my copy is 1977 4th impression - it must have been selling fast) and while not an annual read I have read it countless times. Somehow I managed to miss the impact of the comet Unfinished Tales and while I looked at the HOME books in bookstores when they were published, they did not intrigue me enough to want them until many years later. Well, of course, it is now many, many years later and I have all these volumes (in multiple copies) and all the usual ancilliary volumes which are aids to enjoyment and recently I wondered if others come to Tolkien by other routes - surely they must - and at a greater pace - certainly many will. But what routes and what pace? I guess the Jackson movies may have played their part too.