Dakota Datebook: Fern Welk

Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm.

In 1927, Lawrence Welk and His Novelty Band discovered the power of the media when Welk persuaded a Yankton radio manager to let them play on his station one morning. It went so well, that the band got a long-term contract out of the deal.

Lawrence had no shortage of female admirers in Yankton, but the nursing student he fell for wasn’t one of them. Fern Renner was far more interested in becoming a doctor than getting mixed up with a musician. Lawrence became so desperate that he scheduled himself for a tonsillectomy, hoping she would be his nurse. She wasn’t, but she felt sorry enough for him to visit him afterwards.

It was on this day in 1931 that Lawrence finally won Fern’s hand. They got married in Sioux City, Iowa, at 5:30 in the morning, because Lawrence and his band had to get on the road to play a show in Wisconsin that night.

Fern enjoyed being a wife and mother but maintained a lifelong interest in medical science and research. She was an avid duplicate bridge player, winning many championships, and she relished her afternoons at the horse races, placing her small bets with the knowledge and instincts of a “pro.”

Fern guided the education of her children and saw her grandchildren achieve many college, career and graduate degrees. Their nurturing was her life’s joy, and it is no accident that her two daughters happily married physicians and that three of her eleven grandchildren became physicians.

Fern Welk died February 13, 2002, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California. She was 98 years old.

"Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of N.D. and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council.