Groth first knew poet John Berryman when he taught one of her college courses at the University of Minnesota, and she later encountered him again in New York when he contributed to the New Yorker's poetry section. During this time, he proposed marriage to her multiple times, says Groth – but she says this was "perhaps not the mark of distinction it seemed in the moment." Groth says that, "It seems he was, in the years between his second and third marriages, proposing to every halfway decent woman he met."
