JILL SCHRAMM/MDN Donny, left, and Judy Schneider stand outside Central Campus, where they attended their first two years of high school in Minot, on Friday, June 12. They spent time back in their hometown this past weekend.

Siblings Judy and Donny Schneider might not have wanted anyone to know about their escapades growing up in Minot in the 1970s, but they are spilling the beans now.

Judy Schneider, who graduated from Minot High School in 1981, now lives in Venice, Florida, and Donny Schneider, a 1980 graduate, lives in Denver. They were back in Minot for a few days this past week for Judy’s 45th class reunion and to capture additional photos for a podcast they launched June 2 called “Stories From The Middle of Nowhere: The Things We Weren’t Supposed To Tell.”

The podcast focuses on tales of their youth while eliciting a nostalgia that’s familiar to many.

“It’s an indie podcast, so we don’t have any sponsors. It’s just us telling stories, and the point of it is for nostalgia,” Judy Schneider said. Judging by responses on their social media pages that support the podcast, it is prompting people to remember and talk about their similar stories, she said.

“That’s why we’re doing the podcast. Because we want people to have that same feeling and not forget some of those cool things,” she said.

“Judy and I always joke about ‘Were we good kids or bad kids?’ and our thought process has changed on that a little bit, because I’ve always said we were great kids. Well now, as we’re doing the podcast and reliving some of these stories, it morphs a little bit. Maybe we weren’t that good. We did some crazy things,” Donny Schneider said.

The Schneiders have done a lot of talking about life in Minot over the years and have been encouraged by listeners to preserve their memories. That led to the start of conversations around a podcast about a year ago.

“We have three seasons lined up. So, we have 36 episodes right now. We have season one completely recorded,” Donny Schneider said.

Seven episodes have been released. The intent is to release an episode each of the next five weeks before taking a two month break ahead of the next season’s release. The podcasts run about a half hour each.

Donny Schneider, who still works in radio in Denver, handles the editing, while Judy Schneider, newly retired from working in marketing and promotions, has charge of social media and the website.

The Schneiders meet online to record from their homes. They have about a 10-minute strategy session before recording, but the podcasts are unscripted and unrehearsed.

“We both just love talking about our childhood and growing up here,” Donny Schneider said. “We do recognize that we had a special childhood.”

The Schneiders grew up in southwest Minot, attending Perkett Elementary, Jim Hill Junior High and Minot High’s Central and Magic City campuses. Both left to attend college, but Donny Schneider returned to work in radio and television in Minot from 1985-1990.

Their father, Don, was a captain with the Minot Police Department, and their mother, Wilhelmine, was a native of Germany who spoke mostly German and worked as an interior designer for I. Keatings. For a time they owned House of Wicker and operated a gift shop in Minot’s first airport terminal.

Donny and Judy Schneider both delivered newspapers for The Minot Daily News, which is talked about in one of the podcasts. They also have an older sister.

Their parents now live in Colorado, but while in Minot, Don Schneider was a police detective, polygraph specialist and hypnotist.

“It made for a lot of interesting stories, and what we could get away with,” Judy Schneider said. “Mom was as good of a detective as my dad, and she did not miss anything.”

Living with detectives didn’t stop the Schneider siblings from testing the waters, though.

“We always joked that I was grounded pretty much my whole high school existence,” Donny Schneider said. “So, one of our running jokes is that there’s a lot of people in high school that don’t know me because I just never was able to go out and interact. I was always in timeout at home.”

In addition to stories of their personal adventures, highlights of life in Minot’s yesteryears are shared with photographs in the podcast version on YouTube. Judy Schneider digitized some of her father’s slides from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

They also created YouTube shorts that are vignettes of the podcast.

“We just put out a bunch of shorts last weekend, and we’ve already gotten 15,000 views on those,” Donny Schneider said. “The podcast is this nostalgia podcast, and telling stories, and we’re touching people that we knew or grew up with, but we’re also touching a bunch of people that we don’t know and didn’t grow up with.”

The podcast has been accessed in 10 countries and 70 cities, and most viewers are not connected to Minot.

“We have probably a couple hundred subscribers, too,” Judy Schneider added. A typical response to their Minot memories is “What a great place. It sounds amazing,” she said.

Another positive circumstance that has come out of the podcast is a renewed family connection.

Judy Schneider said a cousin in Arizona, formerly of Bismarck, had little connection with the extended family over the years. An only child whose parents are no longer living, the cousin reached out after listening to the podcast.

“It’s kind of a new connection for her and a family that kind of came to life from all of this, too, which has been something totally special and unexpected that was super nice,” Judy Schneider said.

The Schneiders also said some things don’t change even as they’ve grown older and wiser.

“Just because we graduated and moved on doesn’t mean the zaniness and the goofiness has stopped,” Donny Schneider said.

Judy Schneider said every podcast season will have a fast-forward episode to talk about incidents in the family that happened more recently.

“Our aunt died and you’re not going to believe what our dad, who was a retired cop, wanted to do with the body. I’ll leave it at that,” Donny Schneider said. “It’s episode seven.”