A Tri-Cities customer favorite for decades has died at age 86

The matriarch of a retail fixture in downtown Kennewick has died.

Marian Gravenslund, 86, helped run True Value Washington Hardware and Furniture for two generations. She didn’t officially retire until five years ago.

At the time, she told folks she would have continued if she could keep running up and down the stairs to the second-floor furniture department that she was in charge of for years.

She had a knack for remembering people and their furniture purchases more than a decade after they bought their last item from the store at the corner of Kennewick Avenue and Washington Street.

“She wasn’t a salesperson in the traditional way. She wasn’t interested in pushing items out the door,” her son John Gravenslund Jr. told the Herald. “She was truly interested in getting the correct thing for her customers. She was genuine.”

She moved to the Tri-Cities in 1953 soon after marrying John Gravenslund Sr. when he returned to work in his father’s store.

They were part of the second generation to work in the business, following Wilmot Gravenslund who started the business in 1919.

“When she came here, Kennewick was a small little town,” her daughter, Victoria Gravenslund said. “She has seen the growth of the area. That was exciting for her.”

Furniture department

After raising her three kids, she started working in the store in 1974 running the furniture department.

She was already ready to work in retail before coming to Kennewick. Born in Nome, Alaska, in 1933, her family soon moved to Seattle, where she got her first job in retail at Seattle’s Frederick & Nelson department store. She earned 77 cents an hour.

She loved helping people find furniture to meet their needs, said Victoria Gravenslund. After Marian’s husband died in 1986, she become responsible for the business.

“She got a kick out of helping people find the right thing for their home,” Victoria Gravenslund said. “She had to assume a lot of responsibility. She worked until she was 81 and if she could have, she would have worked until the time of her death.”

Even when a hip started failing her, her son relied on her ability to remember people and furniture. John Gravenslund described her as a rock for their family.

“She was always a staple in our lives,” he said. “The most important thing to her was to make sure her three kids got fed.”

Marian Gravenslund made an impression on a young Stephanie Button when she went into the store with her parents.

“We bought all of our furniture from True Value,” said Button, the director of the Historic Downtown Kennewick Partnership. “I always thought she was elegant.”

For her family, the store was the place to go to buy high-quality furniture. Now she has seen the impact the family had on modernizing the downtown and helping the community at large.

She also worked actively to bring about the Tri-Cities Cancer Center.

“She felt it was important to have a place in the community where people can get their healthcare,” said Victoria.

Mueller’s Tri-Cities Funeral Home in Kennewick is handling her funeral arrangements.