The Couch family were among the first settlers of Havana village (now Montour Falls). Jonathan P. Couch was Brigadier-General of the 18th Brigade, 20th Division, New York Infantry in the 1830s.

Harvey Joel Couch was born in Montour Falls, NY in 1880, the son of Charles H. Couch and Mary Turner. After attending Cook Academy in Montour Falls, he entered Cornell University, graduating in 1901. At Cornell he was a member of Phi Delta Theta and class treasurer. He worked as a clerk for the Chemung Canal Trust Company in Elmira for two years, before becoming a managing partner of Charles H. Couch and Sons, Bankers in Odessa. In 1935, he began serving as manager of the Resettlement Administration in Ithaca. He married Helen Hubbell in 1906, and they had four daughters. He died in 1959.

Helen (Deanie) Couch Darling, the youngest daughter, graduated from Cornell in 1944 with a B.S. in microbiology. In October 1944 she enlisted in the Navy as a W.A.V.E. and was assigned to the St. Albans Naval Hospital. In 1946 she returned to Odessa and married Stanley Martin Darling. She worked as a hospital lab technologist at Schuyler Hospital and at Arnot Ogden Hospital.