Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Hearts come up frequently when Jenn Hinkle and Becky Ortyl talk about their friendship—a friendship born from unimaginable loss and responsible for one of St. Louis’ most popular restaurants, Olive+Oak.
Jenn and her husband, Mark, and Becky and her husband, Greg, lost young sons to congenital heart defects within six months of each other. Neither family knew the other, and after Oliver “Ollie” Hinkle and Oakes Ortyl passed away, their parents acted quickly to get involved in the fight against the medical condition. The Hinkles joined the Children’s Heart Foundation’s board and went on to start The Ollie Hinkle Heart Foundation, while the Ortyls founded the Mighty Oakes Heart Foundation. “It was a natural path for both of us,” Jenn says.
Then, in summer 2013, Jenn and Becky met at The Magic House. Drawn to Becky’s Mighty Oakes Heart Foundation T-shirt, Jenn introduced herself, sharing that she had lost Ollie only six months prior. Becky, still “fresh and heavy and hard” from the year anniversary of Oakes’ death, couldn’t believe she had run into someone else who’d endured the same experience and wasn’t paralyzed by grief.
After Jenn and Mark moved to Webster Groves, where the Ortyls live, they began seeing each other at school functions. (The couples have children close in age and in the same gender order: Isla, 7, Oakes, who would have been 5, and Esme, 2; Maddie, 7, Ollie, who would have been 5, and Annie, 2.) When Mark and Greg met in 2014, they immediately hit it off. At the time, Mark was the manager of Annie Gunn’s and planned to one day open a restaurant; Greg wasn’t in the industry, but he too dreamed of owning a restaurant.
So began the journey that would result in Olive+Oak, named in memory of their sons.
As the couples prepared for the restaurant’s opening, Becky worried, “What if we don’t get along after six months?” Mark responded, “How bad can it be if a restaurant fails? It will just fail, and we’ll move on. We’ve been through the worst, and we’ve come out on the other side.”
Jenn views the restaurant this way: “The foundation of our friendship is our two boys, and there’s not anything that can bring that down.” The restaurant is “built on love—on Oliver and Oakes,” she says. Becky agrees: “Our friendship has such a strong foundation and so much more to it that has nothing to do with the restaurant. The restaurant is just a blip on the radar of our common bond.”
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
Beyond the restaurant, both women are actively involved in philanthropy, with their foundations complementing each other. The Children’s Heart Foundation raises funds for research, while both The Ollie Hinkle and Mighty Oakes heart foundations raise money for families affected by congenital heart defects.
Asked what they like about each other, both women mention the other’s generosity and resilience. “Through losing our boys, we both came to these places in our daily lives really quickly where we could see we had a choice: We could choose to stay in the funk and heartache and struggle, or we could choose love and our families and living,” says Becky. “We jumped at that choice to move on in similar ways,” Jenn adds. “The whole process of grieving has been a rebirth. I wish that Ollie was back here. I also took this as, ‘I need it—I need to wake up—I’m not doing life the way I should be doing it.’ It’s a whole transformation of the self.”
Despite their optimism, there are bleak times, and it’s on those days when they draw on each other for support. On the one-year anniversary of Ollie’s death, Becky and Isla decorated the Hinkles’ yard with heart balloons on sticks, creating one giant heart. “It’s a big, open acknowledgement of your child who’s not here,” says Jenn.
About two years ago, both women became pregnant with their third child. “I was so excited to be pregnant, but it was so hard missing Oakes,” recalls Becky. “I was so scared I would forget about Oakes or I would never love Esme as much as Oakes. It was amazing to have Jenn, who had lost a child and was also pregnant again. To have that friendship was invaluable. And it wasn’t that we sat around crying… I could text her and say, ‘I’m having a shitty day,’ and she would send a two-word text. And I knew someone gets me—I’m not alone.”
With their full schedules, Jenn and Becky still find time to have family dinners at Olive+Oak. They’ll meet at the restaurant with their kids for an early meal. Both the parents and children are simpatico. “It could only be more perfect,” says Jenn, “if our boys ever got to meet.”
Want to Get Involved?
Two fundraisers that fight congenital heart defects
November 6: The 4th Annual Ollie Hinkle I Heart Food and Wine Festival at The Ritz-Carlton
• 25-30 local participating restaurants
• 300 wines to taste and six local brewers
• Silent auction, raffles, fun trips
• Volunteer, sponsor the event, or purchase tickets, starting at $125
November 12: The Mighty Oakes HeART Foundation Gala at the Museum of Contemporary Art
• Heart-related art from local artists, as well as families and friends affected by congenital heart defects
• Food stations
• Art auction, live auction, silent auction
• Visit the website for ticket info.
