December 24, 2025 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Ruth McKeaney and her husband stepped into a historic home that was falling off its foundation, they had no idea it would be the first of many. Over the years, they’ve raised five kids while flipping one broken house after another, including a 300-year-old home once tied to William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, himself. Ruth shares how trial, grit, and grace turned a collapsing structure into a space where others could feel real belonging.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
And we continue with our American stories. Home isn't just
a place, it's, we hope, the most important place in
our lives. And there's just something special about the American
home at what it means to all of us. Up
next to tell her story is Ruth McKinney, author of
Hungry for Home. He's lived in over thirty different houses herself.
(00:31):
Here's Ruth with her story.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well, I was an assistant DA in the state of
Virginia for several years, and then I became an assistant
Attorney General. And up to that point, I think I'd
moved about twenty three times. So moving and home and
a sense of stability were really important to me. I
got married when I was right about thirty and my
(01:00):
husband announced to me, we're going to be moving up
to the Philadelphia area. I get pregnant right after we move,
and that first year, Bob and I lived in nine
different homes. And I'll tell you what, for somebody who
had been practicing law for several years and then starting
to stay home and moving around nine different times, that
(01:25):
was my first real identity crisis. And I think a
lot of women who have done that can probably say
the same thing. You go from feeling a sense of
accomplishment and purpose to what am I doing all day?
But cleaning up something that keeps getting messed up? And
I'm all of a sudden out of my lane when
(01:45):
I had felt very in my lane. Before the end
of that first year. Bob and I contacted a realtor
who took us and sat us down and said, how
much can you afford? And we told her. She burst
out laughing, and for any realtor out there, I would
advise that's the last thing you should ever do. Well.
(02:07):
She called us two weeks later and said, are you
afraid of hard work? We didn't know what that meant.
She took us to a home about one hundred and
fifty years old, sliding off the foundation, and my husband
looked at me and said, we can do it. So
we go to home depot and that's where our house
flipping story really begins. We had one toilet, I mean,
(02:28):
the house was literally sliding off the foundation. It had
a Martha Washington staircase up it, so you couldn't get
I mean, we couldn't understand why are there only twin
beds on the second floor? Well, you couldn't get bigger
beds or bigger furniture up the stairs. So Bob and
I ended up having to build an entire two story
edition on the back just to get our furniture upstairs.
(02:49):
And because it was the only bathroom we had and
we had no kitchen, whoever took a shower had to
wash the dishes that were in the bathtub first. But
we were approached by that same realtor eighteen months later
and she said, you know you can sell this for
more than double Well, right then we knew we were
good at something. My family going back generations, my grandfather
(03:16):
was an evangelist. They traveled all over Asia, Sumatra. My
dad grew up with his five siblings overseas, and there
were constantly people in and through my grandparents and my parents' home,
and I knew I had a heart for blessing people
in and through our house. We began to flip homes
(03:39):
every eighteen to twenty four months. We found that we
had a real knack for it. So it was a
lot of moving and doing all of the work ourselves.
Bob was literally coming home from work and working. I
mean he would say good night to our daughter and
start working around seven, finish around one leave for work
again at five in the morning. We did that day
(03:59):
in and day out, So that was the second thing
we had to work on, not just the home, but
how to navigate things as a couple. And I'll never forget.
We went and sat down in Barnes and Noble because
we had no money to go on a date, but
we could get the magazines on the shelf, sit down
for free with a cup of coffee and put the
magazines back. But he and I would each take a
(04:20):
yellow legal pad of paper while we go through magazines,
and we would write down what was most important to
each one of us so that we could compromise on
the other things. And then we would talk about it,
and I would say, what this did was give us
a very healthy marriage. We have learned how to navigate
(04:42):
hard things and compromise. We've learned how to laugh at
our mistakes. There have been a lot of mistakes on
the homes, and if we didn't get a sense of
humor or give each other grace, it would have been
really really hard. I mean imagine it. We're moving literally
every eighteen twenty four months. Not to mention, we had
(05:02):
five kids in five different homes, I'll never forget. In
one of the houses, Bob was laying tile on a
new kitchen floor for me, and it was a subfloor,
which means it's a wooden floor. And he had applied
concrete on the whole thing and started to tile, and
I came home and said, oh, let's go out to dinner.
(05:23):
He said great, So we went out to dinner. We
come home only to realize that all that concrete had
hardened onto the plywood and you cannot get it off.
So Bob had to take a chisel and a hammer
and chisel the whole floor. But all of these things,
I think that's one of the reasons I love and
appreciate my husband so much. He just isn't afraid to
(05:44):
make mistakes and he's just going to try again. And
not many people can do that. I mean, when I
first met Bob, my dad said, I don't want to
hear Bob's name one more time, because all your mom
said is, well, let's get Bob. Let's call Bobo. And
so that kind of became a running joke. Bob the
builder is who I was married to. You know, we
(06:08):
were trial by fire. I mean, in one house, I'll
never forget standing on the stairs and Bob fell through
the ceiling of the second floor, down through my floor,
down into the basement. He had stepped on the wrong beam.
So it's given us a real just a love and
appreciation for each other's skill set. You know, somebody asked
(06:31):
me once, They said, well, I don't have a family culture,
and I said, oh, yes, you do. You have a
family culture, whether you're intentional about creating it or not.
So you better be intentional about it. You know. We
could easily have just pushed through and worked only, but
we had kids in the process, and to me, what
makes and creates home is those family traditions and connections.
(06:57):
So that's where I feel like my passion skill set,
whatever you want to say comes through, is how do
you create family traditions that make your kids keep wanting
to come back. I have no interest in having a
perfect life. What I've wanted to do is to create
a safe place for my kids to not be perfect in,
(07:18):
and for people to come in and feel loved and appreciated, relaxed,
not feel like they could never measure up, and just
wanting them to feel like they're home when they're here.
When we first bought the house. There was a photographer.
Our home was being put in a book called Stonehouses,
(07:41):
and the photographer came from New York who had done
a number of estates museums. I mean, he was a
very accomplished photographer, and he came into our house. He
was staying here for about ten days photographing, and he
walked through the whole house completely silent. And I was
scared to death because I knew most of the things
in our home Bob and I have collected from, you know,
antique sales and garage sales. And I thought, what is
(08:03):
he going to say? And he walks into my kitchen
and I said, is everything okay? And he said I
only have one thing to say? And I said what
he said, I'm home. And I thought, you couldn't give
me a bigger compliment than for someone to feel that
way in my house. So it's been really exciting. And
I just sit there and go, Lord, you have taken
(08:25):
this to a place I never could have. It's just
been an amazing time to say I can't receive any
of the accolades. Is only God, in the words of C. S.
Lewis the fact that our heart yearns for something Earth
cannot supply. Is proof that Heaven must be our home,
and all of us homemakers can accomplish only so much
(08:46):
through our efforts to fill a void that only Heaven
can truly fail. These efforts, however, are important, and the
ability to make others feel loved, welcome, and cared for
during their journeys through life is one of the greatest
gifts you can give. Restoration is always possible. Great things
can go out of ruins, Families can thrive in places
so that were once unfit for life. Take it from me,
(09:08):
you will never regret the effort it takes to make
your house a home.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Dericot, And a special thanks to
Ruth McKinney for sharing her story and her husbands and
so many Americans who have the same passion and that
is creating a beautiful home for their families and a
culture and a story of family. And her book is
called Hungry for Home and you can get it at
(09:33):
Amazon or the usual Suspects and my goodness, she spends
so much time flipping houses, rebuilding houses, moving and moving
again and finally, how this story ends as she's finally
created a home and so many of us that's what
we want more than anything else, is a home, a family,
and a place we can call our own. Ruth mckinnie's
(09:53):
story Hungry for Home here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Home isn't just
a place, it's, we hope, the most important place in
our lives. And there's just something special about the American
home at what it means to all of us. Up
next to tell her story is Ruth McKinney, author of
Hungry for Home. He's lived in over thirty different houses herself.
(00:31):
Here's Ruth with her story.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well, I was an assistant DA in the state of
Virginia for several years, and then I became an assistant
Attorney General. And up to that point, I think I'd
moved about twenty three times. So moving and home and
a sense of stability were really important to me. I
got married when I was right about thirty and my
(01:00):
husband announced to me, we're going to be moving up
to the Philadelphia area. I get pregnant right after we move,
and that first year, Bob and I lived in nine
different homes. And I'll tell you what, for somebody who
had been practicing law for several years and then starting
to stay home and moving around nine different times, that
(01:25):
was my first real identity crisis. And I think a
lot of women who have done that can probably say
the same thing. You go from feeling a sense of
accomplishment and purpose to what am I doing all day?
But cleaning up something that keeps getting messed up? And
I'm all of a sudden out of my lane when
(01:45):
I had felt very in my lane. Before the end
of that first year. Bob and I contacted a realtor
who took us and sat us down and said, how
much can you afford? And we told her. She burst
out laughing, and for any realtor out there, I would
advise that's the last thing you should ever do. Well.
(02:07):
She called us two weeks later and said, are you
afraid of hard work? We didn't know what that meant.
She took us to a home about one hundred and
fifty years old, sliding off the foundation, and my husband
looked at me and said, we can do it. So
we go to home depot and that's where our house
flipping story really begins. We had one toilet, I mean,
(02:28):
the house was literally sliding off the foundation. It had
a Martha Washington staircase up it, so you couldn't get
I mean, we couldn't understand why are there only twin
beds on the second floor? Well, you couldn't get bigger
beds or bigger furniture up the stairs. So Bob and
I ended up having to build an entire two story
edition on the back just to get our furniture upstairs.
(02:49):
And because it was the only bathroom we had and
we had no kitchen, whoever took a shower had to
wash the dishes that were in the bathtub first. But
we were approached by that same realtor eighteen months later
and she said, you know you can sell this for
more than double Well, right then we knew we were
good at something. My family going back generations, my grandfather
(03:16):
was an evangelist. They traveled all over Asia, Sumatra. My
dad grew up with his five siblings overseas, and there
were constantly people in and through my grandparents and my parents' home,
and I knew I had a heart for blessing people
in and through our house. We began to flip homes
(03:39):
every eighteen to twenty four months. We found that we
had a real knack for it. So it was a
lot of moving and doing all of the work ourselves.
Bob was literally coming home from work and working. I
mean he would say good night to our daughter and
start working around seven, finish around one leave for work
again at five in the morning. We did that day
(03:59):
in and day out, So that was the second thing
we had to work on, not just the home, but
how to navigate things as a couple. And I'll never forget.
We went and sat down in Barnes and Noble because
we had no money to go on a date, but
we could get the magazines on the shelf, sit down
for free with a cup of coffee and put the
magazines back. But he and I would each take a
(04:20):
yellow legal pad of paper while we go through magazines,
and we would write down what was most important to
each one of us so that we could compromise on
the other things. And then we would talk about it,
and I would say, what this did was give us
a very healthy marriage. We have learned how to navigate
(04:42):
hard things and compromise. We've learned how to laugh at
our mistakes. There have been a lot of mistakes on
the homes, and if we didn't get a sense of
humor or give each other grace, it would have been
really really hard. I mean imagine it. We're moving literally
every eighteen twenty four months. Not to mention, we had
(05:02):
five kids in five different homes, I'll never forget. In
one of the houses, Bob was laying tile on a
new kitchen floor for me, and it was a subfloor,
which means it's a wooden floor. And he had applied
concrete on the whole thing and started to tile, and
I came home and said, oh, let's go out to dinner.
(05:23):
He said great, So we went out to dinner. We
come home only to realize that all that concrete had
hardened onto the plywood and you cannot get it off.
So Bob had to take a chisel and a hammer
and chisel the whole floor. But all of these things,
I think that's one of the reasons I love and
appreciate my husband so much. He just isn't afraid to
(05:44):
make mistakes and he's just going to try again. And
not many people can do that. I mean, when I
first met Bob, my dad said, I don't want to
hear Bob's name one more time, because all your mom
said is, well, let's get Bob. Let's call Bobo. And
so that kind of became a running joke. Bob the
builder is who I was married to. You know, we
(06:08):
were trial by fire. I mean, in one house, I'll
never forget standing on the stairs and Bob fell through
the ceiling of the second floor, down through my floor,
down into the basement. He had stepped on the wrong beam.
So it's given us a real just a love and
appreciation for each other's skill set. You know, somebody asked
(06:31):
me once, They said, well, I don't have a family culture,
and I said, oh, yes, you do. You have a
family culture, whether you're intentional about creating it or not.
So you better be intentional about it. You know. We
could easily have just pushed through and worked only, but
we had kids in the process, and to me, what
makes and creates home is those family traditions and connections.
(06:57):
So that's where I feel like my passion skill set,
whatever you want to say comes through, is how do
you create family traditions that make your kids keep wanting
to come back. I have no interest in having a
perfect life. What I've wanted to do is to create
a safe place for my kids to not be perfect in,
(07:18):
and for people to come in and feel loved and appreciated, relaxed,
not feel like they could never measure up, and just
wanting them to feel like they're home when they're here.
When we first bought the house. There was a photographer.
Our home was being put in a book called Stonehouses,
(07:41):
and the photographer came from New York who had done
a number of estates museums. I mean, he was a
very accomplished photographer, and he came into our house. He
was staying here for about ten days photographing, and he
walked through the whole house completely silent. And I was
scared to death because I knew most of the things
in our home Bob and I have collected from, you know,
antique sales and garage sales. And I thought, what is
(08:03):
he going to say? And he walks into my kitchen
and I said, is everything okay? And he said I
only have one thing to say? And I said what
he said, I'm home. And I thought, you couldn't give
me a bigger compliment than for someone to feel that
way in my house. So it's been really exciting. And
I just sit there and go, Lord, you have taken
(08:25):
this to a place I never could have. It's just
been an amazing time to say I can't receive any
of the accolades. Is only God, in the words of C. S.
Lewis the fact that our heart yearns for something Earth
cannot supply. Is proof that Heaven must be our home,
and all of us homemakers can accomplish only so much
(08:46):
through our efforts to fill a void that only Heaven
can truly fail. These efforts, however, are important, and the
ability to make others feel loved, welcome, and cared for
during their journeys through life is one of the greatest
gifts you can give. Restoration is always possible. Great things
can go out of ruins, Families can thrive in places
so that were once unfit for life. Take it from me,
(09:08):
you will never regret the effort it takes to make
your house a home.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Dericot, And a special thanks to
Ruth McKinney for sharing her story and her husbands and
so many Americans who have the same passion and that
is creating a beautiful home for their families and a
culture and a story of family. And her book is
called Hungry for Home and you can get it at
(09:33):
Amazon or the usual Suspects and my goodness, she spends
so much time flipping houses, rebuilding houses, moving and moving
again and finally, how this story ends as she's finally
created a home and so many of us that's what
we want more than anything else, is a home, a family,
and a place we can call our own. Ruth mckinnie's
(09:53):
story Hungry for Home here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.