Happy Valentine's Day

Once upon a time, the letters “FBI” could have stood for “full-blown infatuation,” as far as Laura Hinderaker was concerned.

While growing up in the 1940s and spending summers on Lake Melissa in Becker County, Minn., she set her heart on becoming an FBI agent.

In junior high, she wrote a report about her dream job and discovered to her disappointment that the FBI didn’t hire women as agents.

Well, she concluded in her report, if she couldn’t be an FBI agent, she’d marry one.

The years passed and she moved from the Midwest to the Indio, Calif., area in hopes of making it as a professional golfer.

To pay the bills, she started a welcome wagon business. One day, she called on the bride of an FBI agent and the two women became friends. It was some time around Valentine’s Day when her new friend got an idea.

“She said there is someone I want you to meet, he was in our wedding,” said Hinderaker, recalling how she was talked into going on a blind date 55 years ago.

Hinderaker’s new friend told her a little bit about the mystery man and then arranged for them to meet at the Riverside County Fair, where Hinderaker had a part-time job as the voice of Geraldine, the talking cow.

“Laura, having a microphone, started talking about me and my Minnesota roots. After that, we went out to dinner,” said Ted Hinderaker, the other half of the blind date.

Laura remembers the dinner and her first good look at Ted this way:
“I had a drink of some kind in my hand and this audible voice spoke to me and said, ‘That’s the man you’re going to marry,’ ’’ she recalled.

“I coughed – spewed everything out – and everyone said, ‘Are you all right?’

“I couldn’t tell ’em why I had done that, but that’s the story. And I did marry him,” said Laura, adding that her newly beloved failed to bolt when she immediately disclosed the premonition to him.

“It didn’t spook me,” agreed Ted, recalling his reaction.

“The next weekend,” Laura said, “he came down, because he was stationed in L.A., and he brought me a beautiful little pair of earrings, that I still have. And maybe that’s when he said, ‘OK.’ ’’

“I was struck,” Ted said. “It became very evident to me that I was in love with her, and we very quickly concluded we were going to be married, probably quite soon.”

His hunch was right.

They got hitched six months later.

But let’s back up a bit.

It was only after they decided to spend the rest of their lives together that Laura and Ted began getting to know each other.

In those first conversations, they discovered that when Laura was spending her summers on Lake Melissa, Ted was spending his at a cottage on Pelican Lake, just a few miles down the road.

They also learned that when Ted was a student at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., he became friends with a woman named Audrey, whose family summered on Lake Melissa.

Audrey often pestered Ted that he should date a friend of hers from the lake.

Funny, Laura told Ted.

She had a friend named Audrey who felt strongly that Laura should date a boy she knew at St. Olaf.

“She (Audrey) had tried to set us up for several summers, but for whatever reason it never worked,” said Laura, adding she isn’t sure she ever learned the boy’s name.

That is until she proposed to him.

After getting married, Laura continued to play competitive golf until just before the birth of their third child.

The couple ultimately raised five kids.

A few years ago, the Hinderakers moved from California to Tucson, Ariz., to be close to two of their children.

Now they’re looking forward to August and their 55th wedding anniversary. The celebration will be in Detroit Lakes, Minn., where the nuptials took place.

“They say there are some marriages made in heaven. I don’t know. But it’s been a good life,” Laura said.

“Not perfect – nobody’s walking on the water,” she added, “but we have five wonderful children, five all-intact families. I think there was a little divine guidance there.”

All the kids have heard the story, according to Ted, who doesn’t know “if it was fate or what,” but feels he and Laura were destined to be together.

In case you’re wondering, when he wasn’t talking to cows and buying them earrings, Ted Hinderaker worked for the FBI.