Kathy Windsor – one-half of a legendary RTO couple – is dealing with grief by taking up the familybusiness mantle & choosing the bigger life
It has been almost three years since Kathy Windsor experienced the greatest loss of her life.
Kathy and her husband Mark were at an oceanside resort in Cancun, Mexico, celebrating their 43rd wedding anniversary. The day before their actual anniversary, the Windsors decided to splurge on a couple’s massage out on the beach. The massage was delightful, with Kathy and Mark chatting occasionally throughout. But when it was over, Mark didn’t get up.
At 64, without warning, Mark Windsor died.
And it’s clear – and completely understandable – that Kathy is still working through her grief. She and Mark were not only spouses, but also co-owners/operators of National TV Sales & Rental, a now 19-store rent-to-own company based in Missouri, and a 500+-head cattle ranch – not to mention parents of three and grandparents of ten. Married just after Kathy’s high-school graduation, the pair had grown into adulthood side-by-side, and had built a full and prosperous life together.
Add to all that Mark’s larger-than-life personality, charming exuberance, irrefutable charisma, winning wit, and strongwilled ambition, and the reality of a light that bright going so dark so suddenly is difficult to grasp.
But there it is. Mark is gone. And Kathy is still here, working as hard as ever to distract herself from her husband’s absence, yes, but mostly to continue the legacies – both professional and personal – she and Mark were collectively creating. To ensure whenever she departs this earth to join him, that she leaves behind an even more impactful mark on the lives of the people who shared their world.
God. Family. National. In that order,” Kathy asserts the Windsor family maxim. “We put God first to the best of our abilities. Family is our next top priority, and then our business.”
And that is pretty much the order in which these three things showed up in Kathy and Mark’s lives. Both grew up in south central Missouri – Mark on a dairy farm in Lebanon (pop. ~15,000), Kathy just 27 miles away in tiny Linn Creek (pop. <250). But that’s about where the similarities stop. Kathy was a straight-A student who never missed a day of school and lettered five years in volleyball. Mark – three years older – had been an up-and-coming football star until he was involved in a head-on collision during his junior year of high school; he was one of only two survivors, but his heart was damaged by the steering column ramming into his chest. Farewell, football – and college.
The two met while both working at Lake of the Ozarks, a lake resort destination. Kathy, a high-school junior, worked at a meat and cheese store after school; Mark was a hotel bellman.
“He’d walk by and peek in the shop window, grin and wave at me,” Kathy remembers.
“He was the only one brave enough to ask me out on a date. Mark was kind of a wild child, so I thought he was very interesting. And I don’t like to be told ‘no,’ so when I was told I shouldn’t date him, that’s exactly what I did.”
“Mark was kind of a wild child, so I thought he was very interesting. And I don’t like to be told ‘no,’ so when I was told I shouldn’t date him, that’s exactly what I did.”
Kathy Windsor
Mark moved briefly to Florida, but diagnosed himself as too lovesick to stay away, and returned to Lebanon. He and Kathy were wed the summer after she graduated from high school. Then, one afternoon while Kathy was at her goddaughter’s christening, Mark overheard the Glenn Campbell song “Galveston” while hanging with friends, and it must have called to him, because he hopped on his Honda 350 motorcycle and sped off to the Texas coast – without a word to Kathy.
“He was just gone, missing for three days,” she recalls. “When he finally called, he told me he had a job and to pack my bags, because we were moving to Galveston. I had been out of the state of Missouri exactly once before then.”
Mark’s jobs were many and momentary in those days, because, according to Kathy, “he always thought he was smarter than the boss.” Two years later, the couple’s first child, Aaron, was born – as was a career, when Mark went to work for Lone Star TV Rental in Texas City.
“Mark could sell ice to an Eskimo,” notes Kathy. “So he got a $100 raise in his first paycheck, and two more raises in the next two checks. He won every quarterly sales contest, won three trips.
So when they promised him a district manager position and then reneged, he decided we would open up our own store – right across the street.”
In fact, Mark worked his last day at Lone Star on the opening day of National TV Sales & Rental, which Kathy oversaw. National did well, but the area was declining and the Windsors had a young family to raise (which now included second son Anthony). So they went home to Lebanon, intent on opening up a National store there. Mark went to the bank to borrow, but needed his dad to co-sign the loan.
“His father had never heard of rent-to-own, and said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do something like that,’” Kathy remembers. “But his father’s friend, William Nicoles, said, ‘If you won’t invest in it, Dick, then I will.’ So both Nicoles and Mark’s dad invested; Mark eventually bought them both out.”
So the National TV Sales & Rental that still serves as the company’s flagship store today opened in Lebanon, Missouri, in 1986.
Mark and Kathy Windsor grew their RTO business to 17 successful stores, and their family to five, with the arrival of daughter Michelle. And the line between family and business grew blurrier and blurrier until it sort of disappeared altogether, and they became the heart of a genuine family business.
“At one point, we had 13 family members working at National,” Kathy notes. “All three kids began working at the store at 16, and continued part-time while they went to college. Today, Mark’s brother Rick still manages with us, Michelle takes care of all of our fleets, Aaron is our Executive Vice President, and I’m the President and CEO. Mark always took care of operations and I took care of all of the admin stuff – he used to say he made the money and I spent the money. But it worked well because he had a lane, I had a lane, and we stayed out of each other’s lanes.”
Kathy has adopted a similar understanding with Aaron, who has changed a few things around National. Employees are no longer required to wear suit-and-tie-level apparel; the norm now is logo-wear, and some tattoos or piercings may be visible, as long as they’re tasteful.
“Aaron is just a different person,” says Kathy. “He gives our employees more time off, and he’s extremely generous with them with anniversaries, contests, and prizes. He’s strong-willed like his dad, but Mark was stricter, rougher, more sort of ornery. Aaron has more of an easygoing approach.”
One thing hasn’t changed – the way the Windsors treat the people around them, which is also quite familial. Their National employees are one family extension. For many years, the Windsors hosted a huge barbecue for staff members and their families; Mark cooked the meat, and Kathy and her two sisters would make the rest of the menu from scratch, enough to feed about 150 people. Every December, Kathy still makes baskets full of homemade holiday treats, then drives almost a thousand miles around the state to hand-deliver them to every one of their 19 stores. And she handmakes baby blankets for each new addition to staff families.
Rent-to-own friends and colleagues are another type of extended family for the Windsors. Mark was extremely active in industry leadership, serving 21 years on the Missouri Rental Dealers Association Board of Directors, and four years on the APRO Board, including a stint as 2nd Vice President. In 2013, Mark and Kathy together won the APRO Dealer of the Year award. They loved traveling to RTO events, and made many dear friends over the years.
“I love the camaraderie of this business,” Kathy affirms. “All of my rent-to-own besties live all over the country. For years, Kevin and Angie Quinn and Dick and Mims Eichlin and Mark and I traveled all over the world together and had the best of times – golfing, shopping, fine-dining, and of course, a few bottles of red wine here and there. The Eichlins were from Virginia and the Quinns were from Washington, so we called our little alliance VAMOWA. Mark and Mims are both gone now, but the four of us still get together for a weekend every year. How RTO folks take care of each other is my favorite part of this business.”
The Windsors’ extraordinary commitment to service makes National customers – and by extension, their communities – a third kind of other-family. Kathy says National supports their customers in good times and bad, adopting hundreds of families around the holidays, and secretly paying hospital bills and funeral expenses.
The Windsors established a foundation through National that matches employee contributions to various charitable causes, including local food banks and homeless shelters. Kathy created Operation Fresh Start, an initiative offering free furniture, appliances, and electronics to domestic abuse survivors and families who have lost their homes in fires. She and her kids initiated an agricultural/technical program scholarship in Mark’s honor, while the family also runs a nonprofit charity called New Found Hope.
“How RTO folks take care of each other is my favorite part of this business.“
Kathy Windsor
“Our customers are the ones standing all day long in restaurants or driving bulldozers, doing hard labor,” notes Kathy. “I sit at a computer all day, so they deserve a good night’s sleep on a high-quality mattress more than I do. They deserve all the assistance and support we can provide.”
Devotion is the Windsor way of life. As the family matriarch, Kathy continues to lead by example – devoted to Southern Heights Christian Church, where she and Mark were married; to her and Mark’s children, their spouses, and their grandchildren; to their family business, National TV Sales & Rental, as well as the rent-toown industry, their huge circle of RTO friends, their employees, customers, and communities; and to the family’s cattle on their beef ranch, Windsor Family Farms, where Kathy and Mark built their forever home over 30 years ago, where their kids and grandkids live within three miles, and where Kathy spends most of her time nowadays.
“I spend a lot of time taking care of the farm and our staff out there,” she explains. “And I take care of the younger grandkids – the youngest is now three years old, the oldest is 18 and about to graduate from high school. Pretty much every Sunday, I cook a family dinner from scratch, including homemade ice cream, for all 17 of us. I used to quilt and crochet and read a lot, but since Mark’s passing, I just don’t have the focus for it. My mind wanders too easily.”
Above all, Kathy Windsor is devoted to the memory – and the continuing legacy – of her husband and everything they created together in their 42 years + 364 days of wedded partnership.
“Mark was definitely a larger-than-life guy,” affirms Kathy. “He’d go into a bar on a Friday night to collect payments – because our customers had just been paid, and we knew where to find them – and he’d come out with one fist full of money and the other full of cocktail napkins with receipts scribbled on them. And everyone loved him – he was the life of the party and did right by people. Mark lived a big life, and he left in a big way.”
Inspired by “The Dash,” a poem by Linda Ellis, Kathy gave her center-of-attention spouse something special to be remembered by at his final resting spot. The poem reads in part: He noted first came the date of birth | And spoke the following date with tears, | But he said what mattered most of all | Was the dash between those years. | For it matters not, how much we own – | The cars…the house…the cash. | What matters is how we live and love, | And how we spend our dash.
“We buried Mark’s ashes out on the farm – we’ve got a double headstone,” Kathy concludes, “and the dash between his birth date and his death date is about six inches long and an inch-and-a-half wide – because between birth and death, he lived a big, big life.”
Kristen Card has been a contributing writer for RTOHQ: The Magazine for more than 15 years.
