MINNEAPOLIS — Kay Knapp and Dennis Hauptly have thrown a huge, annual bash for 25 years — one with balloons, loud music and bleachers in their yard. The couple, who lives on West River Parkway in Minneapolis, is readying to do it again this year.
“It is some work, but when you do it for 25 years, it’s pretty routinized,” Knapp said.
She and her husband, Hauptly, never planned on starting the festive tradition; rather, the idea came right by their front yard, at the 18-mile mark of the Twin Cities Marathon.
“We moved into this house in early ’95… and when the marathon came around that year, we went out with some coffee to watch it,” Hauptly said. “And then [we thought], well, this is a pretty good place to watch this! What if we had some bleachers? And it snowballed from there.”
They invited friends to populate the bleachers to cheer on weary runners and curated a playlist from songs within their personal collection.
With songs like Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Going Down that Highway,” Knapp says, “Almost all of these songs have a running or a walking theme.”
As the tradition grew, so did their reach—Knapp and Hauptly have even had friends fly in from Europe to experience their cheer party.
With so much thought and effort put into this annual event, when new neighbors Michelle Klatt and her husband moved in, there wasn’t a second thought to try to get them on board.
“We did not know [about this party] when we bought our house ten years ago,” Klatt said. “But when we met Kay and Denis, they let us know at the first meeting that this was something that they did.”
Klatt and her family joined in, adding a Bloody Mary bar for the adults and a bounce house for the kids. She knows just how meaningful a cheering section can be to runners.
“I’ve run marathons… I’ve run 11,” Klatt said. “So I know what it’s like to be a runner and to have that little extra support to be like, 'Oh here’s some music, and here’s someone cheering me on.'”
The neighbors have dubbed their joint celebration “The Parkway Party,” a name emblazoned on bright red, paper megaphones. The megaphones are new this year, a move to strengthen their chances of winning the second-annual TCM Cheer Zone competition, which awards top cheering sections money to give to their nonprofit of choice.
Whether or not they win a prize, Knapp, Hauptly and Klatt are thankful for the friendship that had formed through this enduring tradition.
“Kay and Denis are amazing neighbors, so it’s been really fun,” Klatt said. “Not just for the marathon party, but just, for being neighbors. Sharing this is just one of the things that’s been great.”
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