ANN ARBOR, MI – As a University of Michigan art student living in West Quad, Richard Magner lived near a small burger joint. He’d often go to eat just before they closed up shop for the night.
It was his sophomore year in the fall of 1969 and “Rich” – as his friends called him – needed a job, according to his daughter Emily Magner. Soon after walking into Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger old location on Division and Packard streets, Rich’s life would change. He boarded up in a studio apartment attached to the restaurant and would work there until 1974.
He never finished art school and kicked off what would turn into decades of restaurant work around Ann Arbor. He eventually returned to Blimpy Burger in 1992 with his wife of 45 years, Christine Magner, where they first met to own and run the restaurant…