Dances, Dresses, and Devotion
Sorority sister ditches blind date, and in the process finds true love.
Marlys (Chally) Sorbo, ’59, wore a dress featured in Brides Magazine at her 1958 wedding to Keith Sorbo, ’59. The dress cost just $57.
Pretty dresses were a staple in Marlys and Keith’s college life beginning the first week of their freshman year. It was a Saturday night at the end of Greek Rush Week, and the newly pledged sorority girls needed dates for a campus dance. Marlys, who had just accepted a bid from Gamma Phi Beta, recalled her new sisters trying to set her up. “I told them, ‘I don’t need a blind date. I’ve got a date,’” Marlys said.
Marlys had her first date with Keith, who spent his summers working on his uncle’s farm in Walsh County, near Marlys’ family farm outside Fairdale, North Dakota. They had gone on several double dates. This date was all it took for them to start going steady.
Keith and Marlys Sorbo had active lives at UND.
Keith and Marlys are home now in Ogden, Utah.
Over the next four years, Marlys and Keith, an Alpha Tau Omega fraternity member, stayed busy working and volunteering, and with Greek life and campus activities. Marlys remembered their almost daily visits to Toby’s It, a popular drive-in restaurant in Grand Forks during the 1950s and ’60s. “That’s why I didn’t get very good grades. It’s all Keith’s fault!” Marlys said, adding she had a 10 p.m. curfew at Johnstone Hall and later at the Gamma Phi House.
One evening, while Marlys was driving Keith’s car to pick him up from work, a police officer pulled her over for having expired license plates. Marlys ended up with a ticket. “That had to be love!” she said.
The couple got engaged on Valentine’s Day of their junior year and married in the summer of 1958 in Fairdale. Anticipating a large crowd from the community and UND, one friend, seeing the small church, exclaimed, “My God, how are we going to get the people in?”
Despite the church’s modest size, its need for a fresh coat of paint, and the cloudy weather, Marlys and Keith’s wedding day set the course for a lifetime of happiness.
The Sorbos, who are at home in Ogden, Utah, have lived in 10 different states and have three children. They have attended nearly every UND Homecoming since graduation.
Reflecting on their journey together, Keith said in late August, “Today is our 66th wedding anniversary. Marlys is the love of my life. She’s been taking pretty good care of me all these years.”
