As originally proposed by the Michigan State Highway Department, the freeway would have been numbered I-98. Construction started in 1961. The Lodge Freeway, the first segment of which opened in 1957, was given the Business Spur I-696 designation in 1962. The first segment of I-696 built was the western third of the completed freeway which opened in 1963–64 at a cost of $16.6 million (equivalent to $ in ). This section ran from I-96 in Novi east to the Lodge Freeway in Southfield. The then-unfinished freeway was named for Walter P. Reuther, former leader of the United Auto Workers labor union after he and his wife died in a plane crash on May 9, 1970. The next year the Michigan Legislature approved the naming by passing Senate Concurrent Resolution 57.