Celebrating Cobber Couples
College is the place to discover all kinds of new friendships. And for some it might be the place they met Miss or Mr. “Right” — that one extra special person you plan to spend many Valentine’s Days with in the future. Concordia has about 3,000 Cobber couples — Cobbers who married other Concordia students. For Clay ’50 and Bonnie (Larson) ’50 Brady their courtship had a striking beginning. Clay spotted Bonnie at a concert after he returned with the Concert Choir from the 1949 choir trip to Norway. Bonnie had just transferred to Concordia and may have been a bit surprised when Clay showed up in the library and asked her if she’d like to go bowling one afternoon. She said yes and they took the bus to the bowling alley for their first date. The Bradys have been married for 55 years.
Bonnie and Clay have maintained many Cobber friendships. One extra special Cobber couple is friends Norma and Bert. “One of my roommates was Norma Lunde ’50, my childhood friend,” says Bonnie, “and one of Clay’s roommates was Bert Tveit who also was in choir with Clay. We double dated our senior year. Clay and I married in June 1952 and Norma and Bert in July 1952.”
Rachel (Burgau) Bergeson ’05 remembers meeting her future husband during their freshman year while helping her dad, Bucky Burgau, check out football equipment. “Bryant (’05) and I had quite a few classes together as we were both science education majors. Bryant also, incidentally, was a baseball player. So the spring of our freshman year Bryant played baseball for my dad.” The pair didn’t officially begin dating until their sophomore year and married the summer after they graduated. Rachel says Bryant had an edge over other young men from the beginning because she noticed he is left handed.
“Growing up in a baseball family, the first thing I thought of was he could be a left-handed batter and if we were to ever have children they could hit left handed as well,” Rachel says. “We now have a 7-month-old little boy, Tyden. He only chews on his mini bat right now, I can’t say which way he will hit.”
And whether or not Tyden bats left-handed or not, Rachel is happy to be one of the 3,000 Cobber couples who found her other half at Concordia. Are you part of a Cobber couple who has a fun Concordia courtship to share? Send it to us during the month of February and we’ll post it on our Alumni site. Please limit your submission to 300 words or less.
- Back to eNews