Minnesota Couple's Love Story Endures Amid Pandemic Separation

NEW HOPE, MN — Will and Carol Bjerke have been married long enough to understand that their devotion to one another may be tested from time to time. But over the past six decades, the coronavirus pandemic may have stretched their love more than anything else.

Married for almost 63 years, the New Hope couple hadn’t been together for almost a year because of the pandemic-related restrictions at the Good Samaritan Society nursing home where Carol lives. But after the long-term care facility was able to loosen its visitor policy in January after not recording to a positive COVID-19 case in four weeks, Will Bjerke was finally able to visit his bride again — albeit through a first-floor window.

The meeting was the first time the couple had been reunited since March 10, 2020, when the pandemic halted what had been a daily lunch shared between the longtime lovebirds. The couple learned that their visits would have to stop immediately after a staff member told them about the new coronavirus policy just as the pandemic was starting, according to Kare11.

When the couple inquired when the policy was going into effect, they were told that that day’s lunch would be the last lunch she could share until further notice. For 10 months, they were forced to remain apart until late January, when they finally got word that restrictions had loosened a bit at Good Samaritan.

That’s when Will Bjerke started showing up at the window just so he could get a glimpse of his wife, although the pandemic kept them from getting any closer physically.

“He hasn’t missed a day,” the couple’s daughter Kathi Bjerke-Wilkerson told Kare 11. “I said (some days), Dad, don’t go — it’s so cold. It’s just a nice feeling that they can see each other.”

Although the couple isn’t certain when they will be able to get closer than the daily windows through a pane of glass, Will Bjerke is committed to his now-daily routine. In the meantime, both Will and Carol have received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, something they hope others will do when they are given the opportunity.

Until things change, the couple will continue to visit from a distance until they can again be reunited.

“You’re doing it for other people,” Will Bjerke told the Minneapolis television station. “You have to remember my dear wife and (Kathi’s) dear mother, you never hear her complain. She’s been in the hospital many times, back surgery, this — she never complains.”