Even after a divorce, pair’s love still intact

After 21 years of marriage, Bill Henrichs and Mary Ziegler — once high school sweethearts — concluded that they were no longer a good match.

The couple amicably divorced in 1995 and went their separate ways, but they continued to see each other at their kids’ school and sporting events. Every once in a while, they’d run into each other at a restaurant or grocery store in their town of St. Cloud, Minn.

“Our interests were different,” Ziegler, 62, said. “But we were always good friends, and family was a big part of our lives. Like a lot of other couples, we’d just grown apart.”

In February 2018, though, she and Henrichs learned they were a match in a different way.

Henrichs’ kidneys were failing, and he was in need of a transplant.

After nearly 40 family members and friends were tested as possible donors, only one person turned out to be a perfect match: Ziegler.

There was never any question in Ziegler’s mind about whether she’d do it.

“I just immediately knew that it was going to happen,” she said. “Bill and I grew up together, we had two children together. And I knew that my children and grandchildren needed their father and grandfather in their lives.”

So on Oct. 16, more than four decades after they said “I do,” she and Henrichs, 62, were wheeled into an operating room at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and one of Ziegler’s healthy kidneys was removed and given to her ex-husband. The transplant went smoothly, with Ziegler going home after three days and Henrichs after two weeks of tests and observation.

“The surgery went well, and the (kidney) transplant is functioning well and continuing to improve as Mr. Henrichs recovers from the surgery,” said Andrew Bentall, a transplant nephrologist at the Mayo Clinic and one of Henrichs’ doctors.

Henrichs and Ziegler were 14 when they met in a school activity bus in ninth grade after singing at a nursing home for extra credit in social studies.