The character of Rose Lindström is a Norwegian American born in St. Olaf, Minnesota, to a monk named Brother Martin and a 19-year-old girl named Ingrid Kerklavoner, who died giving birth. Brother Martin claimed not to have known about Rose's existence until after she had been placed for adoption. After eight years at the St. Olaf Orphanage, she was adopted by Gunter and Alma Lindström (erroneously calling them "Gunter and Alma Nylund" when retelling the story). According to the character, she was adopted after being left on a doorstep in a basket with some hickory-smoked cheese and some crackers "that didn't go with anything". She is described as having daydreamed that her birth father was Bob Hope and that she wrote the comedian many letters whenever she fell on tough times.^[4]

Fourth out of nineteen at high school graduation, the character claims she was chosen valedictorian because she drew the longest straw. Rose attended St. Paul Business School, Rockport Community College, and St. Gustaf University but also never graduated from high school due to a case of mono. She was voted "most likely to get stuck in a tuba" by one of her graduating classes. Not allowed to date until she was a high school senior, she had fifty-six boyfriends before her wedding day. Rose fell in love with Charlie Nylund, a salesman, and they later married. Rose met Charlie when she was seven and he was eight, and he sold her an insurance policy for her red wagon. She and Charlie had a long and happy marriage and a very active sex life, such that she was unaware of the existence of a popular television show called I Love Lucy. Over the course of the series, Rose names five children: Brigit, Gunilla, Kirsten, Adam, and Charlie Jr. Rose also has two granddaughters by Kirsten - Charley (named after Kirsten's father) and another unnamed, mentioned in the episode where Rose had her heart attack. Of her children, only Brigit and Kirsten appeared on the show, although Kirsten was played by two different actresses.^{[citation needed]}

Charlie died of a heart attack while he and Rose were making love, and this gave Rose a fear of sexual intimacy for several years thereafter. Years later, a boyfriend named Al Beatty (Richard Roat) dies in a similar fashion. In one episode Rose confides to Blanche and Dorothy that she and Charlie made love twice every day, once in the morning before breakfast and then once after dinner, getting Blanche to remark "No wonder you still mourn that man".^{[citation needed][5]}

Charlie and Rose's marriage length is unclear. Although it was mentioned in the 1985 pilot episode that Charlie had been dead for 15 years, in the first-season episode "Job Hunting", Rose says that she had been a housewife for 32 years when Charlie died in 1980. In the same episode, Rose is 55 years old in 1985, which would put her birth year in 1930. This would make her 63 when The Golden Palace goes off the air in 1993.^{[citation needed]}

Charlie is the only spouse of the four women on The Golden Girls that the audience never sees. In an episode of The Golden Palace, a man said to bear an incredibly strong resemblance to Charlie makes an appearance; the look-alike is played by Eddie Albert.^{[citation needed]}

Rose is laid off from her job at the grief counseling center in season 1, and briefly works as a waitress at the Fountain Roc Coffee Shop before being rehired at the counseling center shortly after. Later in the series, Rose suffers financial difficulties when her late husband's employer files for bankruptcy and her pension is cut off. She suffers from age discrimination in her attempts to get a new job, but her luck changes when she gets a position as assistant to TV consumer reporter Enrique Más. Rose finds a significant romance with college professor Miles Webber, though their relationship is put through a serious strain when it is revealed that Miles is actually a former mobster accountant named Nicholas Carbone, and a participant in the witness protection program. His former employer, "The Cheese Man," begins dating Rose in order to get information on Miles's whereabouts. Eventually The Cheese Man is apprehended, Rose and Miles resume their lives together, and all goes well for approximately the next year. In season 7, Rose and Miles consider marriage, but ultimately decide against rushing into anything. Their relationship later ends permanently during an episode of The Golden Palace when Rose discovers that Miles loves another woman, one whom he subsequently marries .^{[citation needed]}

Rose frequently tells ridiculous and tedious stories of her hometown, St. Olaf, which often begin with, "Back in St. Olaf..." According to her, St. Olaf is a Norwegian farming settlement in northern Minnesota, known on local license plates as "Big Statue Country". During the show's seven-year run, St. Olaf is seen twice in flashbacks,^{[citation needed]} and once when the ladies visit because Rose has been nominated for St. Olaf's Woman of the Year award.^[6]

One of St. Olaf's chief attractions is a giant black hole, which the townspeople enjoy standing around and looking at - which prompts Dorothy to refer to St. Olaf sarcastically as the real "entertainment capital of the world." St. Olafians also celebrate various oddly-themed festivals. St. Olaf appears to be a bilingual town with a significant amount of unique vocabulary (that may be specific to the area and not appearing in standard Norwegian).^{[citation needed]} One of the unique attractions of St. Olaf is Mt. Losenbauden, similar to Mount Rushmore, except that it features the faces of losing presidential candidates; Adlai Stevenson is featured twice because he lost twice.^[6]

It is suggested by Rose's stories that St. Olaf is populated almost entirely by idiots. In the season three episode "Mother's Day", Rose encounters a travelling woman named Anna, who says about St. Olaf, "I don't mean to say that everyone there is an idiot, but it just seemed that, per capita, they have more than their share." When Rose says that her children realized it would be cheaper for her to visit the family than it would for the family to visit her, Anna happily replies, "They figured that out, and they live in St. Olaf? You must be very proud!"^[7] Additional indications include the revelation that St. Olaf has an emergency fund for the sole purpose of erecting statues, that the local beauty pageant was pigs-only until humans were first allowed to compete in the 1940s, and as of the 1980s, no St. Olafian had read all three books in the local library.^{[citation needed]}

Rose has the ability, which she calls "The Gift", to speak with animals and hear their conversations. This was initially thought to be a delusion of hers, until Dorothy was discovered to have this ability in season 2. It is never brought up again.

Outside The Golden Girls and The Golden Palace, Rose appears on three episodes of Empty Nest: "Strange Bedfellows", "Rambo of Neiman Marcus" and "Dr. Weston and Mr. Hyde". She also appears on the Nurses episode "Begone with the Wind".