The one parent of mine who did have a degree got theirs in a STEM field, so exposure to the parents of some friends who had PhDs in the humanities (with books floor-to-ceiling, reading newspapers in languages with alphabets I had neither seen nor dreamt of -- this was pre-internet, and "middle America", to a first-order approximation, mind you) was quite an eye-opener. It was like they were just on different plane, intellectually (though also very grounded, and nothing at all like the detached, academic stereotype).
I can imagine it might have mattered even more if they were math or science PhDs -- again, this was pre-internet; so I never heard of the International Math Olympiads until my later years of college, actually (way past the age when it would have mattered).
I ended up not going into academia, but it was a serious consideration for quite a while (and yes, the early role models definitely helped).