Robert Hoffmann knew right away when Mary (Shultz) walked into a fraternity house party with a group of four friends in 1978 that he and his friend had to meet them.

“We had a great weekend together so I invited her down for the next party weekend,” he says. When Mary and Robert didn’t talk after that weekend, he invited another girl to come the following weekend.
“They both showed up that next party weekend,” he says. “I was in the dog house, but she forgave me. We have been married 39 years with four children. Our family includes three engineers, a lawyer, a doctor, a Marine officer and seven grandchildren.”
Both mechanical engineering majors, the pair took classes together and loved to hang out. Robert graduated in 1981. Mary graduated in 1982, and they were married that same year.
“I started Hoffmann Brothers Heating, Air Conditioning, Plumbing and Electric,” he says. “Mary retired as the plant manager for the Henkel Corp. in St. Louis. We could not have done it without our live-in nannies. It makes family life easier.”
Share This Story
Spark a Memory?
Share your story! Fill out the form below to share your fondest memory or anecdote of S&T. If you'd prefer not typing, you can also share by phone at 833-646-3715 (833-Miner150).
Taylor Husman and Tyler Recker
Taylor Husman and Tyler Recker met on the patio of Kappa Sigma fraternity on their second night at S&T in…
Setting new trends
Tamiko Youngblood, MinE’92, MS EMgt’94, PhD EMgt’97, was a woman of many “firsts.” She was the first African American woman…
Solar Village people
Before there was a Solar Village on campus, there was a sole villager. Allison Arnn graduated in 2005 with an…
Movie magic
The technology used to create Davy Jones from “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” and characters from other films…
Chain reaction
Take 60 sleep-deprived students — easy enough to find in Rolla — and add 450,000 strips of newsprint and 530,000…
Y2K debugger
As the clock ticked down to the year 2000, computer scientists around the world were fretting about the so-called “Y2K…