Model and horse trainer Shannon Ihrke joined the United States Marine Corps 10 years ago — and even though she left active duty in 2012 to focus on her other passions, the blonde bombshell credits the armed forces with giving her life direction.
“I loved it. Absolutely loved it,” Ihrke said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “When I joined, it was 2008 and I was unsure of where I wanted to go, direction-wise. I was working two jobs and going to college at the same time, and I just did not know what I wanted to do.”
The Minnesota native said her light-bulb moment for joining the armed forces was while working at one of her part-time jobs at a clothing store.
I thought, well … [the first one] is out,” she remembers. “But I thought about the military and so I went to a recruiting fair. The Marines were one of the first people I talked to.”
Though Ihrke said she does not come from a military background, she was intrigued by the armed forces. And after a recruiter from the Marines told her she would not last — claiming the Marines' boot camp was twice as hard as other branches — she knew she had to prove herself.
“When I was talking to the Marine Corps. recruiters, they said, 'Ours is twice as hard. You probably [would not] make it through our boot camp anyway. A little girl like you wouldn’t make it,'” she recalled. “So I said, ‘Where can I sign up?’”