When in Palmerton, Mary Behler spends 90 percent of her mornings in Bert’s Steakhouse, on Delaware Avenue, with her husband. In fact, that’s where she met Jen Costenbader. Their interactions were limited by a mealtime, but in those hours, Costenbader often talked about her three girls, and about her husband, David.

Behler and her husband used to own Blue Ridge Pressure Casting, but sold the company shortly after their son Andy, 67, died of pancreatic cancer in June. They live in Palmerton, but travel between the borough and Florida.

Behler and Costenbader’s acquaintanceship may have started with conversations over breakfast, but over the last few months it’s grown. Last summer, David died, and after hearing of his passing, Behler was reminded of the loss of her son.

And there was something about Costenbader that touched her.

“She was of course devastated, but I was so impressed by the way she could continue to go to work because she had to,” Behler said. “It was not a question of who came first, or what came first, she knew what she had to do and did it.”

But as tirelessly as she worked and cared for her daughters, Costenbader still had need of a new home.

The family lived in an old trailer on a two acre parcel of land they own. Costenbader said she and David hoped to eventually buy a new trailer, as their current home - while functional - has floors that are starting to give out.

“The floors in these trailers, they don’t hold up,” Costenbader said. “They’re old.”

To make a new trailer more of a possibility, Behler asked Costenbader if she could raise some money on her behalf.

Behler wrote a letter to 10 friends asking if they’d be willing to donate to the Costenbader family, and she instructed them to send letters to their friends as well. Through that network of letter writing, Behler raised $15,000 on the families behalf.

“(The fundraiser) was amazing. The checks we got in for $100 and $150 — I was just amazed,” Behler said. “And they didn’t even know her.”

“Sometimes you don’t have to know people to know what’s inside of them. She’s a good person,” she continued.

Costenbader was 19-years-old she met David. The two got to know each other while hanging out around downtown Palmerton, and one day, David invited Costenbader to accompany him on a truck pull.

Costenbader accepted David’s invitation, and that day, he came in first place. That was in 2005.

“That was his first 1st place trophy that he ever won, and he told me I was a keeper,” Costenbader recalled with a chuckle.

Costenbader and David’s relationship only grew from there. In May 2009, Costenbader found out that she was pregnant with twins, but miscarried. The two married that July, and three months later found that Costenbader was pregnant again. She had their eldest daughter, Aubrey, 8, and almost a year later, gave birth to twins, Lily and Gracie, 7.

Costenbader decided to stay home and care for the girls while David worked in the maintenance department of Blue Mountain Resort in Lower Towamensing Township. He was also a landscaper. When the girls got older, Costenbader took up waitressing part-time. She started working at Bert’s Steakhouse in Palmerton in January.

Last spring, David and Costenbader got into an argument. Of that day, Costenbader remembered that David was saying strange things, insisting that their oldest daughter, who is epileptic, no longer needed her medication. Taken aback by her husband’s out of character behavior, Costenbader took the girls to school, came home and started packing day bags, hoping that space would allow David to cool down.

Later on, Costenbader said, she received a call saying that her husband had been arrested for vandalizing a lottery machine at a local gas station. David was admitted into a hospital and sedated. When he woke up, he had little recollection of what happened only hours earlier.

After being released from the hospital, David seemed to return to his normal self. All was well for the remainder of the spring and through the summer, but when winter came around, another episode struck.

Costenbader and David were laying in bed together when David grabbed hold of Costenbader’s arm. As his grip tightened, Costenbader tried to tell David that he was hurting her, but David said he couldn’t let go, because he wasn’t sure what would happen. Costenbader called David’s brother, Troy, who took David to the hospital. This time, he was admitted for four days.

David was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorders and started on antipsychotic medication.

Mental illness isn’t as uncommon as some may think. According to American Psychiatric Association, in any given year, one in five adults in the United States experience a mental health disorder, and one in 24 adults have a serious mental illness.

For Costenbader, that night marked a turning point in her husband’s battle with mental illness.

“He just couldn’t come back from anything from then,” Costenbader said in November. “He just couldn’t come back from it. He struggled from February until the day that he passed away.”

“He literally like just woke up one day and was a completely different person,” she added.

In the months since her husband’s death, for Costenbader, the only way forward has been through.

“It’s like a roller coaster, I just go to work and I come home,” she said. “I just try to just keep going forward. I have moments, the kids have moments, but we just have to keep pushing forward.”

“My husband taught me to accept the facts of life,” Costenbader added. “I’m not saying I’ve accepted the fact that he’s gone and did what he did, but it happened, you know what I mean? There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

Costenbader said that she still has a ways to go before affording a new trailer, but when she can, the money Behler collected will provide the family with a solid foundation.

“I’m beyond grateful for (the money),” Costenbader said. “When the time comes that we put a home in, it’s really going to give us a little kick start to get things moving.”

But that’s not all the fundraiser did for Costenbader. It gave her a little bit of hope.

“I was emotional, you know because you get to a point in your life where you don’t think there’s any good people out there anymore, so it was amazing to see how everything just came together like it did,” she said.