Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc

Author:Ray Kroc [Kroc, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250127518
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

Art Trygg was the bosom companion of my late fifties. He had been on the staff of Rolling Green Country Club, where I often ate dinner in those days. I hired him to write a newsletter for our operators, but he soon became my valet and chauffeur as well. We were like boyhood chums. And I needed Art’s gruff good humor and sympathetic ear at dinner, because a powerfully distracting new force had swept into my life—I was in love!

Her name was Joni Smith. She lived in St. Paul.

I had gone to the Criterion restaurant up there to meet the owner, Jim Zien, who was interested in becoming a McDonald’s franchisee. I found myself having a hard time concentrating on our dinner conversation, however, because of the classy organ music in the background. It set my pianist’s spirit twitching and dancing in time to its sprightly rhythms. Finally Jim took me over to introduce me to the organist.

Well!

I was stunned by her blond beauty. Yes, she was married. Since I was married, too, the spark that ignited when our eyes met had to be ignored, but I would never forget it.

I saw her often in the months that followed. Jim Zien’s involvement in McDonald’s provided an ideal excuse for me to go up there. We progressed from exchanging small talk, to playing duets on piano and organ, to long, earnest conversations in which I poured out my ideas about McDonald’s and my plans for the company’s future. Joni was a marvelous listener.

Jim Zien finally got his first location going in Minneapolis and, as luck would have it, he hired Joni’s husband, Rollie, to be his manager. This led to long telephone consultations between Joni and me. Strictly business, of course, but with an overlay of growing affection. I would be tingling with pleasure from head to toe when I hung up the receiver.

Feeling this way made it impossible for me to go on living with Ethel. I moved out of our home in Arlington Heights to an apartment in the Whitehall. The next step was to propose to Joni that we both get divorced and marry. I knew this would be a difficult question for her to face, because both of us had grown up with a deep respect for religion and propriety, and we both had been brought up to believe in the sanctity of marriage. She couldn’t make up her mind. Finally, I decided that one of us would have to make the first move and get a divorce, and it would have to be me.

So I bought my freedom from Ethel. She wound up getting everything I had except my McDonald’s stock. She got the house, the car, all the insurance, and $30,000 a year for life. I was happy to pay the alimony. I respected Ethel, she was a lovely person and a wonderful homemaker, and I wanted to be sure she was secure. My immediate problem was raising the attorneys’ fees, $25,000 for my lawyer and $40,000 for hers.

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