CARROLLTON, Ky. (WDRB) -- We often walk out of Walmart carrying a lot, and it’s not just the stuff we put in a cart and then a plastic bag.
In a blue hat with a sparkly pocket and colorful clogs, 86-year-old Mary Ruth Robinson hopes to be the reason you forget about what Carrollton shoppers are carrying.
"You can catch her going in, and then you can catch her going out," said shopper Patsy Smith.
“You don’t find somebody like her every day anymore,” shopper Ted Holcomb said.
“She’s just always smiling,” added shopper Dorothy Holcomb.
The Walmart greeter may check receipts and return baskets, but her real job is to make people happy.
“No matter what is going on in their life,” Robinson explained with a smile.
Everything she knew about her life changed not long ago.
Mary Ruth Robinson with her husband Jackie on their wedding day in Carrollton, Ky. (Image courtesy of the Robinson family)
“I can’t hardly talk about it,” Robinson said.
Her husband Jackie died after a long grueling bout with Parkinson’s.
“He was bedridden for 5 years,” her daughter, Julia Jaddock explained.
“He died on our anniversary,” added Robinson.
So too would a lot of the life she knew for more than 60 years.
“I wish everybody could have that kind of love,” said Robinson. “I thought well if I don’t go to work, I will die of loneliness, because I miss him.”
Slipping on the blue vest, and clipping a name tag to it at Walmart helped.
“My independence is very important to me,” she said.
Mary Ruth Robinson, 86, is a greeter at Walmart in Carrollton, Ky. (WDRB image) July 31, 2023
Some of the love Robinson is now missing at home, she’s getting at work.
There are flowers and many hugs. Some that mean just as much to the person giving them, as the kind greeter getting them.
”The mother let him pass ahead, and she turned around and said ‘you know what? You mean the world to my son,'" Jaddock recalled about an interaction between a customer and her mom. "She goes, 'you don’t know but my son is autistic, and he wouldn’t hug anyone. You are so special to him.' If she can give that, then she feels fulfilled.”
“Working is a beautiful thing, it’s beautiful therapy, and I need the money," Robinson said with a laugh.
Trading in a low place in life for laughs at the home of low prices, and in no doubt making the love of her life proud.
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