The Story of How Anne Beiler Used Pretzels To Save Her Marriage and Her Life

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people, coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. Anti Anne Builer is best known as the founder of Anti Ann’s, the world’s largest pretzel franchise. Here to tell her story in a talk she gave it by all the university is the pretzel queen herself, Annie Buyler. Let’s take a listen.

I was born a little Amish girl in Leicester County, Pennsylvania. Five boys, three girls, one mom, one dad. You know, the old-fashioned way.

Ten of us.

We were raised to love God and to love each other. My dad said to work hard. We hear the line a lot today: work smarter. My dad made me believe if I work hard, I am smart. “Be kind to each other,” my mom said. “Every day, little children, love each other.”

Do not give each other pain.

When one speaks to you in anger, do not answer them again. Every day we heard that. I believe that one of the greatest lessons I learned on the farm was to persevere. You do what you don’t feel like doing. You do it anyway. At the age of twelve, I would make sixty or seventy pies and cakes by myself in the basement of our old farmhouse in a big old pizza oven, and I’d walk down there, wipe the tears from my eyes, because I did not want to do that. My mom and dad would come home from market that night, and my dad was so proud, and he would tell every customer, “My daughter made those pies, my daughter made those cakes.” So at the age of twelve, my bakery was pretty well. It had reached a peak, like I can sell my wares, my goods, my baked goods, and my dad was proud of me that there was something about all of that that really set the pace for me. I really thought I hit the jackpot the day I married Jonas Byler. Now with a name like Jonas Biler, you know that he was Amish.

It’s just, you don’t have to wonder.

Yes, he was Amish. We were young. We were innocent and filled with love for each other and for God, and we were living our dream. As a young Amish girl, all I ever wanted in life was my very own family. I have to tell you the forty-six years of being married to this man.

He’s not quite as tall. His last doctor check-up.

He’s a half in shorter. His hair is not so dark, but he’s still really handsome. And I still believe I hit the jackpot the day I’m married Jonah Spiler. God gave me more than I deserved. The secret is, find someone that loves God more than he loves you. That is not a guarantee, but I can’t tell you that’s a very good start in a relationship. In a few short years after being married, our dreams were broken. Our nineteen-month-old little girl, Angela, was killed in a tragic farm accident as she was walking from our little double white trailer to my mom and dad’s house just up the lane. During that time that she was run over by Bobcat, which my sister was driving at the time, and she was killed instantly. My grief was too deep for words, and I began to withdraw me to a place of silence.

My husband and I drifted apart.

This took me into into a great, deep depression, and based on that, I went to our pastor, who we thought was a good man at that time. And I walked into his office that Monday morning, about five months after our daughter was killed. As I left his office, he seduced me. And I stayed in an abusive relationship for six long years. The grief that I experienced with Angela—as deep as that was—the abuse, took me to the abyss of hell, of despair, of darkness, of guilt, of suicide. Being broken in spirit from nineteen seventy-four to nineteen eighty-four had me believing that God was finished with me.

In nineteen eighty-four, my husband and.

I walked into a church in Austin, Texas.

Broken in spirit.

We were welcomed by the pastor and his wife, Tom and Brenda Wilson. Their love and the people in that congregation restored us back to spiritual health. I had no idea at that time that God had Anti Ann’s on his mind. Through our tragedy, Jonas and I began to put our life back together again with the help of marriage counseling. And Jonas decided, “This is exciting! I want to help other couples get through their struggles and their marriages.”

Just help people.

So he began to study psychology and became a counselor and did free counseling in our community for over fifteen years. When he started counseling and he was doing it as a free service, that meant one thing for me. I needed to go to work and make the dough, the Bretzel.

Dough, that is.

And you’ve been listening to one heck of a story told by Annie Buyler about the tragic loss of her daughter’s life than the even more tragic abuse delivered to her by the person—while the last person who should—her pastor, but then reclaiming her faith and reclaiming her story and a relationship with God. When we come back, the story of Anti Ann and her Pretzel Empire here on Our American Stories. Plea habibe here again, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded there daily, and your support goes a long way to keeping the great stories you love from this show coming again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast at Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, and we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Anti Annie Byler. And she’s best known as the founder of Anti Ann’s, the world’s largest pretzel franchise. Let’s return to the talk she gave at Biola University.

My decision to go to work was based on our financial need and not on a smart business plan. From a housewife to Corporate America almost overnight, Anti Hans started in nineteen eighty-eight, and we knew from the very early days of months of Anti Ann’s was.

Created to give.

God wanted to use Anti Ann’s as a vehicle for missions. I can tell you that purpose with passion is dangerous. Three things that I did not have when I started Anti NSA, and the obstacles that I had to overcome. There were many, but three things in particular: education, formal education, capital, and a business plan. I went through the eighth grade because that’s Amish culture.

It’s what you do.

And when you’re done with eighth grade, you get on the farm and you help mom and dad, or you go get a job. So what we did; it’s all I knew. So I’m not a dropout. We had no capital.

We’d come back after.

Living in Texas, and we had twenty-five dollars cash. Had no plan, had no 401k. I didn’t know what a 401k was, so I didn’t know what CDs, or I didn’t know what. I knew nothing, period, about business or banking, and I felt intimidated as I made my rounds in the business world, and I became fearful. I began to whine, you know, whine and cry to my husband. “Oh, I wish I would be like him, like her, I wish I’d…” Huh. He said to me one day, “Stop whining.”

And just be who God made you.

That sounds like simple, not too profound, but at the time it was very important for me to hear those words. During that time, God took me through the verse in some two verse eight. He said, “I will instruct you, and I will teach you in the way that you should go, and I’ll counsel you with my eye.”

And I took him literal. It was very clear.

To me, there was three things that I had. I had a great purpose, I had great product, and I had great people.

And when you focus.

On what you have, you don’t have any time left to think about what you don’t have. And when we started Anti Hannda in nineteen eighty-eight, with a six thousand dollars leaned from my father-in-law, bought.

Our first market stand.

By nineteen ninety-two, we were opening our one hundredth store. The growth for me was fast and intense. By nineteen ninety-five, we were opening our first international store halfway around the world in Jakarta, Indonesia. I mean, why, you know, people will say to me, “Why did you go to Jakarta, Indonesia?”

My simple answer to the question.

Is: I guess I thought that if we can do business halfway around the world, anything closer would be easier. What I learned early on is the Founder and CEO of a fast-growing organization, was that if we were going to grow as an organization then and fulfill our purpose, then I, the owner, the founder, the leader, that I would have to grow personally. You cannot grow professionally if you do not grow personally.

That meant to me to live a life of purpose meant them that I had to get over me. I had to grow in every aspect of my life, which meant to read books. I went to seminars. I went to conferences.

So I was.

So sick of going to conferences week after week, month after month. Leadership, management, franchise, consult—you name it. I was there because I knew I.

Had to grow.

Over time, I became comfortable in my own skin and confident in the position that God put me in, and it became very clear to me it’s not about me, but it was about the purpose. I became passionate about our employees, and I always, I’ve always been passionate about the product today and the company anymore. But the unfortunate part is that my name is still there, and Linda, I cannot help myself if I come to your store and the pretzels are not perfect.

I just.

I’m passionate about the product and the employees and their needs. And I’m here to tell you that if you care about your employees, they will be loyal to your purpose, guaranteed. I read a book on Lincoln on leadership. Lincoln was dubbed with an MBWA: Manage By Walking Around.

I could relate to.

That is all I ever did: walk around in my office and talk to people.

I knew if I talked to them and cared for them.

I mean, I didn’t know at that time, but I wanted to know them and care for them. I love them and discovered much later, if you can care for your people, they’ll be loyal to your purpose.

When I started Anti Enn’s.

I was surprised at how business was being done, because, remember, I didn’t know anything about business. I hadn’t made my rounds out there in corporate yet. I didn’t know. I mean, I grew up on an Amish farm. It was all about integrity. I knew that Anti Enn’s had to be the kind of company that would honor God in all that we did. Can we do it perfectly one hundred percent all the time? No, but I believe the model is there and to be excellent and to care about building a company of integrity.

Who would have thought that a pretzel?

It’s a common pretzels date all the way back to six ‘t ten AD. God took this little Homish girl from Leanicester County, Pennsylvania, all around.

The world.

Sewing pretzels. We sold the company five. And built the family’s center to help families in need. But all during the years, I kept going back to the promise that God gave to me. “I’ll teach you, I’ll instruct you, I’ll help you.” And I can tell you, He was faithful to his promise, and he not only taught me, but he walked with me every step of the way, and he helped me. Mother Teresa once said, “You don’t have to be famous to be effective; you just have to be faithful.”

And a terrific job on the production and editing by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Biola University for the story you just heard. That, of course, is Anti Anne Buyler’s remarkable life story, born out of tragedy, the very worst kind, and then triumphing despite it and putting her faith in the Lord. But also, well, what she did was, she had to get over herself, that she had to grow personally, which she did relentlessly, and over time, I became comfortable in my own skin and confident in the position God placed me. And we can only hope for that in everyone who’s listening, that you can get to that place; that we can all get to that place. And as Anne Biler said, “In the end, God took this little amage girl all around the world selling pretzels. God not only taught me, he walked with me every step of the way.” The story of Anti Anne’s Pretzels, which in the end, is Anne Builer’s story. Here on Our American Stories.