Raasch Raetz Funeral Home

Patrick's Day, Robert D. Rubner wasn't at McBob's Pub & Grill, helping the bands set up and telling his Seamus stories.Rubner helped re-create the business, turning it into a popular Irish-Scottish pub on Milwaukee's west side. There the traditional celebrations this week will be followed by a sadder one for Rubner on Saturday.He took his own life March 10. Rubner was 58."Alcoholism was what did it," said his wife, Christine McRoberts. "That's where he would get lost and that's what made him make the decision he made."Rubner never graduated from high school but didn't let that get in the way of his education. He worked as a photographer, graphics designer and sometimes a cook, mainly overseas, before returning to Milwaukee.The couple met at McBob's in 1988, when it was owned by other members of her family. And while they had probably met earlier, that didn't really count. He was seven years older and had been away living and working abroad for more years than that."He's my first cousin," said his wife. "I knew probably within an hour of talking to him that this was it. We both knew it."They ended up quitting jobs elsewhere - she was living in Chicago and he was then living in Vienna, Austria - and began life together in Milwaukee."In 1990, we got married in California, where it's legal," McRoberts said of the first-cousins issue.Both got involved at McBob's and then bought the business. A friend, Brian Hunter, began working there in 1995 and later became a third partner.Early on, Rubner and McRoberts began re-creating McBob's as an Irish-Scottish pub. Rubner also started cooking."He's the one who started the soups and the chili," she said. "He's the one who moved it to the next level."An unnamed customer made the suggestion that made all the difference."He told us we should be serving corned beef, and he also told us that the secret of great corned beef was long, slow cooking," Rubner once said in an interview. &quo...