This article regarding this amazing couple who love the Lord with all their hearts who died one day after each other was published in the Pioneer Press.

 By MARY DIVINE | mdivine@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press

PUBLISHED: January 10, 2022 at 6:51 p.m. | UPDATED: January 11, 2022 at 7:05 a.m.

Jim Underdahl died around noon on Christmas Eve.

His wife of almost 64 years, Mary, died two days later — of “a broken heart,” family members say.

The Forest Lake couple “did everything together,” son Paul Underdahl said. “They were inseparable. They worked side by side. They read their Bibles together every morning. They created a ministry together.”

Jim and Mary Underdahl were buried together on Friday – in the same casket – after a shared funeral at Access Church in North Branch. Jim Underdahl was 83; Mary Underdahl was 81.

It’s exactly how his parents would have wanted it, Paul Underdahl said.

Forest Lake residents Jim and Mary Underdahl.(Photo courtesy of Roberts Family Funeral Home)

Jim Underdahl was 17 and a student at Johnson High School in St. Paul when he met Mary Ames, then 15, of Columbia Heights, on a blind date. A mutual friend set them up.




“That was it,” Paul Underdahl said. “It was all done after that first date. There wasn’t a Jim without a Mary, and there wasn’t a Mary without a Jim.”




The couple were married on March 1, 1958, by a Justice of the Peace at the Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul. They renewed their vows in 1970 at First St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in St. Paul after Mary Underdahl lost her wedding ring while falling overboard from a rowboat on Mille Lacs.




They renewed them again at their 50th-wedding-anniversary celebration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; 60 family members flew there to celebrate with them. They had so much fun, they did it again at a 60th-wedding-anniversary party in Puerto Vallarta, Paul Underdahl said.

Jim Underdahl graduated from Johnson in 1956 and took business classes at the University of Minnesota for two years. Mary Underdahl graduated in 1958 from Columbia Heights High School. She worked at the Bungalow Restaurant in Columbia Heights and went to Ritter School of Cosmetology in St. Paul.

The couple purchased eight acres of land in Forest Lake in 1963. Jim Underdahl, who worked as a plant manager in the fiberglass industry, wanted a hobby farm, and Mary Underdahl wanted space to have her own in-home beauty shop, called “Mary’s Mini Salon.”

In 1982, the Underdahls purchased a fiberglass bath and shower company that was going out of business. They renamed it Royaline Industries and divided up the duties – Jim Underdahl was an expert negotiator, and Mary was a meticulous bookkeeper, Paul Underdahl said.

“My dad was a visionary; my mom was the organizer,” he said. “They complemented each other very well.”

The couple would often stop for an appetizer and a drink at Vanelli’s on the Green in Forest Lake on their way home from work, he said. “They enjoyed each other’s company,” he said. “They loved people.”

The Underdahls worked together until 2001, when they sold the business and retired to their house on Forest Lake’s Second Lake.

The house was a gathering place for the couple’s five children, 29 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren. The couple always hosted dinner on Christmas Eve, and the menu was always the same: prime rib cooked on the grill.

Paul Underdahl said he called his father around 11:20 a.m. on Christmas Eve to see what time he should be there to help start the grilling. They arranged for him to come about an hour later.

“My mom was upstairs writing in my dad’s Christmas card,” he said. “I arrived about 12:20, and I walked around the front of the house – that’s where the grills are – and I saw him lying on the ground.”

Jim Underdahl had died just a few minutes earlier of an apparent cardiac arrest.

“The last words my mom heard my dad say were ‘Mary, are the Communion cups ready?’” Jim Underdahl said. The couple served Communion, and Jim Underdahl shared a Biblical message prior to saying grace before dinner on Christmas Eve, he said.

At Mary Underdahl’s request, the family gathered at the house for dinner that evening. “She told my nieces, ‘Make sure you take a lot of pictures tonight,’” he said. “She knew. She absolutely knew.”

The next day, which was Christmas, Mary Underdahl shared a story about her husband. The couple had been reading their Bibles with their morning coffee the week before when Jim Underdahl stopped reading, looked up at his wife and said: “Mary, wouldn’t it be great if we both go together?”

The next morning, Mary Underdahl was in her bedroom when she collapsed. Her children heard her fall, ran up to the room and found her on the floor. “She was gone. No vitals. Nothing. Usually, you at least still have a pulse for a few minutes. She had no pulse whatsoever,” Paul Underdahl said. “She never came back. I think that one half of her had already died. I think it is a Christmas love story orchestrated by God.”

Both Mary and Jim Underdahl had recently seen their doctor, and neither was dealing with life-threatening health issues.

The Underdahls take great comfort in knowing their parents had an “unwavering faith,” Paul Underdahl said. “They lived it and they shared it.”

The couple hired people with disabilities and people who were homeless and often opened up their house to people who needed shelter, he said. “With their success, they blessed others and were both gifted with generosity,” he said.

Their favorite Bible verse was Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The Underdahls are survived by three sons, Greg, Terry and Paul; two daughters, Sue Haseltine and Dana Darling, and 29 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren.

Services have been held.