Their first meeting

On a Spring Saturday night in 1931, two young and pretty women took a stroll down Phillips Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to catch their favorite band, the Brekke Orchestra from Baltic.

All the Norwegian immigrants who had settled in the Sioux Falls area loved the music and fellowship at Mandskor Hall and Signe Marie Johnson and her best friend were no exception.

Born in Oslo, Norway, Signe, now 23, came to America with her family when she was just three years old. She moved to Sioux Falls a couple of years earlier to find work as a nanny and housekeeper for some wealthy families.

As she and her friend walked across the dance floor that night, Isak Salvesen Egebo, a tall drink of water with a thich Norwegian accent, took notice. He had watched her dance with other men during previous Saturday nights at Mandskor Hall but had never had the courage to approach her.

The 24-year-old immigrated to America just four years earlier from a little town called Konsmo in southern Norway. He used his skills in road construction from his native country to get a job in South Dakota as a road boss in Centennial Township. That was a good in that time, with as many as a quarter of the people out of work in the depression days of the 1930s.

When Signe neared Isak's chair along the wall that night, Isak knew it was his chance. Signe, in an interview some 70 years later, remembers the meeting fondly. "He said 'Where are you girls from?'," she recalled. "And so I thought, I'll try dancing with him. And he was about the best dancer I have ever danced with. It was my future husband."