Stanley Lawrence Elkin was born in New York City on May 11, 1930 but he grew up in Chicago. His father, a traveling salesman, moved the family there in 1933. Joan Marion Jacobson was born August 15, 1932, on the South side of Chicago to immigrants from Minsk and Lithuania. Her father Ted was a shop owner in downtown Chicago. 

Both Stanley and Joan attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is where they met and soon thereafter became inseparable. They married in Chicago on February 1, 1953, and returned to Urbana for Stanley to finish his M.A. in English and Joan to finish her B.S. in Education. After graduating, Joan took on a teaching job at an elementary school while Stanley worked odd jobs and continued to write and publish his own stories. 

Joan did not find her calling in teaching, and did not last long at it, but she began taking drawing classes in her spare time, which awakened a lifelong passion for creating visual art. Stanley, after a two-year stint in the army, returned to Joan in Urbana to begin doctoral work. His dissertation studies focused on Faulkner and he was the fiction editor of the influential literary journal, Accent.  

Stanley, Joan and son Philip moved to St. Louis in 1960 for Stanley to begin teaching in the English department at WashU. Though Stanley wanted most to make a living as a writer, he also excelled at teaching. He would soon be serving as a visiting professor at universities and colleges all over the country, and became a regular at prestigious writers’ conferences, while maintaining his regular WashU appointment. In 1983, he became the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, a title he held until his death. 

The Elkins added Bernie and Molly to the family, in 1966 and 1967, respectively, and moved to their home in the Parkview neighborhood of University City in 1967, where they remained the rest of their lives. Stanley continued to teach and write, while Joan created dozens of oil paintings, prints and other works of visual art. Both were devoted parents and then grandparents.  

Stanley was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1972. He became more dependent on Joan as his health deteriorated over the years. By the early nineties he relied on her for practically everything. After he died, on May 31, 1995, Joan filled her additional free time with creating art, gardening, traveling, attending readings, art openings and opera, and more. She remained physically active too, sticking to a strict fitness routine until her cancer diagnosis in 2021 finally slowed her down somewhat. She died on April 14, 2022.