This is one way to tell this story: Septuagenarians Russell Lindsay and Marilyn “Skip” Nielsen are getting married today because Russell didn’t have any second-grade classmates 69 years ago.

The chain reaction that led to their wedding today was, from this view, set into motion by the teacher of Russell’s one-room schoolhouse in the fall of 1940.

He was the only second grader in the rural Nicollet County school in the now-vanished town of Kerns. So his teacher mixed him in with a pair of third graders over Christmas break to ease her burden.

That put a young Russell in the same grade as a young Marilyn, who was attending school about six miles away in North Mankato. Her father had nicknamed her “Skip” — she can’t remember why — and it stuck.

Russell’s promotion put him in Skip’s grade, but didn’t put them much closer than that until they enrolled in junior high together. They met in ninth grade but didn’t get to know each other until their junior year.

The junior class play was “Home Sweet Homicide,” about a trio of children trying to solve a murder and set up their widowed mother with a police lieutenant investigating it.

Russell, who said he played an injured witness, remembers Marilyn in the play. (She says she doesn’t remember the play).

They never dated in high school, but they both remember performing together at their graduation ceremony in 1950. He sang the Lord’s prayer. She played the piano.

Next year, he sang at Marilyn’s wedding to Roger Nielsen. This time, he’s the one who doesn’t remember.

A few years later, Russell got married and became a United Methodist Minister in Hendersonville, Tenn. She eventually moved to Arizona, where she split her time between Mesa and Show Low, a cooler city that sits on a plateau more than 6,000 feet above sea level.

They would not have any contact for more than 50 years.

In October of 2004, organizers of a reunion for the class of 1950 sent an e-mail to advertise the 55-year reunion.

Russell Lindsay, who was at this time living with his wife in Tennessee, hit the “reply all” button and said he couldn’t come because of a conflict with a family reunion. He also included the lyrics to “By the Bend of the River,” the only song he knows that’s about the Mankato area.

Marilyn, whose husband had died in 2002, got Russell’s e-mail and remembered the song. They developed an online friendship.

He asked his family to reschedule their reunion for the same weekend as the class reunion, and they did.