Back to School

They met at a movie on campus. Nearly 60 years later, they had a return engagement

By Joe Tougas ‘86 

Ask him today about the 1965 Steve McQueen and Lee Remick movie Baby the Rain Must Fall and Murray Hanson ‘70 will tell you it was nothing to rave about. 

But one spring night in 1967, when the movie was showing at MSU’s Old Main, he sat through it twice. 

It was all he felt like doing after being introduced in the hallway to Mary Eastwold. 

A first-year student from the southern Minnesota town of Leroy, Mary was attending the second showing with a friend who worked with her in the housing office. That friend had been a high school classmate of Murray’s in Albert Lea. 

“As we walked into Old Main toward the movie, Murray was walking out and he recognized my friend and they started a conversation,” Mary recalled. 

The conversation ended, but something else began. When the women went into the film, Murray returned as well. 

“I went in and sat in the back so I could see them again on the way out,” Murray said. “By the time they got back to Gage, I was making a call [to Mary.] I didn’t have to think about this one.” 

Thus began a romance that has lasted to this day. They married after graduating in 1970, with Murray then attending seminary school. He’d earned a double major in speech and political science, leaning toward law, but felt a pull toward ministry. His great-grandfather had been a pastor in Albert Lea. 

Mary earned a teaching degree but didn’t teach, instead working in offices and raising their two children as the couple served churches in Storm Lake, Iowa, and later Rockford, Illinois. 

Nearly 60 years after meeting at Old Main, the couple returned to MSU in spring 2025 to visit their grandson, Calvin, a presidential scholar. Calvin had grown up in Rockford, where Murray ministered for decades before retiring in 2014. 

“This was like a whole new world,” Murray said. “We were totally amazed by how many more buildings, what great facilities, and how everything had grown and expanded in a good, healthy way.” 

During the visit, they met with KMSU station manager Dwayne Megaw—a highlight for Murray, who produces a radio show in Rockford. Mary appreciated that Carkoski Commons was named after her former supervisor, Chester A. Carkoski, assistant Dean of Students and Director of Housing from 1960 to 1973. 

“I loved him,” Mary said. “It was a great experience working there.” She recalled MSU being known for its opportunities and affordability. Her brother had attended, and as valedictorian of her high school class, she was offered a scholarship, grant, loan, and campus job. “Those four things paid for everything. I had no second thoughts about going anywhere else.” 

It’s common, Murray said, for people to wish they’d gone to a different school after hearing others’ experiences. 

“But I always thought this was the right place. There was no question. For so many reasons,” he said. “And the fact that it’s where we met, that just cinches the deal.”