I used Fortran77 because the company where I worked had legacy code written in the 1970s and 1980s, and the senior management preferred the old language. The sponsor eventually had it upgraded to modern Fortran.
Fortran was not the first language I used, but the fifth language, which I encountered at university.
First language I used was BASIC during Grade 6, ca. 1969. We used a punch teletype and phone-based modem to connect with some time-share computer somewhere.
During high school I encountered Fortran during a summer program at a local university, but we didn't do any programming at high school. We still used slide rules at the time, and only in Grade 11 did I see the first electronic calculator.
During my first few years at university (mid 1970s), I took one programming course, but instead of Fortran, we learned Pascal, PL/C (a version of PL/1, IIRC) and APL. I believe the expectation was for us to be flexible. We did use Fortran for engineering courses, and we used punch cards until they started getting terminals. I used to put rubberbands around the card deck, or if decks were large, we have a cardboard boxes/trays with lids to be sure they didn't spill.
At university, I used a calculator more than computer. I believe the progression was TI SR-51, TI-58C, and ultimately HP-41CX, which I still use! Upper level and graduate school engineering courses used Fortran (1980s).
More recently (2012-2014), I've used C++, which I find much more cumbersome than Fortran, which I prefer. In my experience, C++ was hyped, and I didn't see a benefit with object-oriented language, especially when some others keep changing to the underlying (upstream) architecture making the downstream objects useless.