Gilbert Schneider was born in Dallas, Oregon, in 1920. That same year, Mildred Voth was born in Salt Creek, Oregon. Both were descended from Russian-German (Volga German) immigrants. They met in high school, and after they had both completed college, they married in 1944.

In 1946, Gilbert Schneider and Mildred Schneider were sponsored by the North American Baptist Commission as missionaries to western Africa. They worked in the Mambilla region of Cameroon, and during the 1950s built and managed New Hope Settlement, a hospital for leprosy patients in Mbingo, Cameroon. In 1961, the Schneiders returned to the United States, where Gilbert Schneider began graduate studies.

After their official resignation from missionary service in 1963, the Schneiders moved to Athens, Ohio, where Gilbert Schneider taught linguistics and African Studies at Ohio University, and Mildred Schneider worked as a registered nurse at the Ohio State Mental Hospital. In 1982, the Schneiders retired and moved back to Oregon.

Gilbert Schneider and Mildred Schneider had three children: Evan Schneider, Mary Alice Schneider, and Linda Schneider. Mary Alice Schneider, the only one of the children born in the United States, died at sea in 1952. Gilbert Schneider died in 1999; Mildred Schneider died in 2016.