In a receiver having at least a first equalizer and a sampler, a calibration module jointly calibrates a reference voltage and one or more equalizer coefficients. For each of a set of test reference voltages, an equalizer coefficient for the first equalizer may be learned that maximizes a right eye boundary of an eye diagram of a sampler input signal to a sampler of the receiver following the equalization stage. Then, from the possible pairs of reference voltages and corresponding optimal equalizer coefficients, a pair is identified that maximizes an eye width of the eye diagram. After setting the reference voltage, the first equalizer coefficient may then be adjusted together with learning a second equalizer coefficient for the second equalizer using a similar technique.