A sweetheart of a story

Couple’s marriage closely connected to faith

On Christmas Eve in 1963, David Shrupp walked into Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Renville, Minnesota, with his sweetheart Gretchen on his arm … and an engagement ring in his pocket.

As they sat in a pew together before Mass, he asked her to be his wife and mother of his children. David, ever intentional in his timing, made sure that the first thing he and Gretchen shared together as an engaged couple was the Eucharist.

Now married 60 years, the story of David and Gretchen stands as a story worthy of a Valentine’s Day movie, filled with love and dedication, to each other, and to God.

The two met as teenagers in Minnesota and went on their first date – to the state fair – in the late 1950s. Throughout a five-year relationship, David and Gretchen were separated by 150 miles, yet remained diligent in writing to each other almost weekly.

They wrote of school, their friends and God. 

“A lot of our letters talked about what we were doing in our faith life,” Gretchen said. 

Although she had attended a Catholic boarding school, unlike David, she wasn’t as involved in activities outside of church. 

“His faith really was very important to him,” she said. “He was very active in the Newman Club. I just went through the motions.” 

Over the next few years, David’s example would serve to lead Gretchen to a deeper relationship with God. 

Their correspondence continued with a familiar, comforting cadence. Although the two never made a commitment to go steady, choosing instead to remain open to any opportunity young adulthood might bring, David was shocked to receive one particular letter from Gretchen.

“Gretchen wrote me a letter, and it said that we were going to have to break up because she wanted to become a nun,” David said. “I read it and I felt very, very sad. I was so heartbroken, and I wrote her a letter back asking to see her one more time.

“But what I had missed was the last sentence of her letter that said … P.S. April Fools!”

Of course, Gretchen did not become a nun, and the next 60 years delivered four daughters, 19 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. David’s service with the United States Coast Guard took them from Minnesota to Maryland to Alaska to Wake Island, a small coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Then they went from the middle of the ocean to New York to a Navajo reservation in Arizona.

And finally, in 1977, to Shawnee, where they are parishioners at Saint Benedict Catholic Church. 

One of their grandchildren, Father Jerome Krug, spoke of his “Omi” and “Opa” and how when they met in middle school, she had a code name for him “that she would use with her friends so no one else would know who she liked.” 

Krug also revealed that “they have years’ worth of love letters from their dating years which they have saved.” 

The Shrupps did indeed save the letters they exchanged throughout their courtship. On their 50th wedding anniversary, David and Gretchen read some of those letters aloud, playing actors in their own roles, to their children and grandchildren.

While those letters tell an impactful love story, it was also David’s decision more than 60 years ago to put Christ at the forefront of their relationship that was a harbinger of how he and Gretchen would lead future generations of their family to become deeply rooted in their faith, service and commitment to the Catholic church.

Sally Linhart is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.