Some years later the couple returned to the United States, where Russell worked for confectioners, in Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois, during the balance of the 1910s.

[citation needed] Iowa schoolteacher Christian Nelson had the idea of enrobing a block of vanilla ice cream with melted chocolate.

He partnered with Russell Stover, then studying chemistry at the University of Iowa, to develop a workable process of doing so without melting the ice cream.

Ultimately he waited too long, imitators thrived, the initial craze wore down, and licensed sales plummeted into the mere thousands of dollars.

That year, Louis Ward, a box-maker who had been supplying packaging materials to the company, purchased a controlling interest and took the business public.