Today is our 42nd wedding anniversary! Wow! Has our marriage always been easy? Nope. Are there days we simply “put up with each other”? Yes. I’m pretty sure there have even been days when we didn’t particularly like each other — but we still loved each other.
One time I was so mad at him that I started packing a bag to leave. He said, “You can’t leave. We said until death do us part!” So I put the suitcase back in the attic, and in a few days things were probably back to normal.
People ask us how we’ve stayed married this long. One answer is our faith in Christ. We’ve always been involved in church activities, and many of our closest friends came from church. We’ve always made it a priority to be in church on Sunday mornings.
Our other rule is that we never discuss anything important after 7:00 p.m. We learned that lesson the hard way many years ago.
We are very different people. Mark loves everything outdoors — hunting, fishing, yard work — while I prefer indoor hobbies (remember, I have horrible allergies). Strangely enough, I think our marriage has actually been better in the last 15 years than it was before.
Here I am before the wedding (sorry for the photo quality — it’s a photo of a photo):
My matron of honor was Karen, and the bridesmaids were my two roommates, Kaye and Faye — identical twins — along with Mark’s sister, Susie.
Mark had two best men: his daddy, Harry, and his identical twin brother, George. Did you catch that? We had TWO sets of identical twins in our wedding!
His other groomsmen were his cousin Bubba; his brother Bill (Bill is the brother who died in 2025); and Mark’s good friend, Mark L.
We were married in the same church we still attend today. Mark has been a member there his whole life.
And here we are leaving the church — we did it!
We had a reception at the church with two cakes, cheese straws, mints, nuts, and non-alcoholic punch. Back then, most people in our circle had church receptions. I’m trying to remember the first time I attended a country club or hotel reception. I know all of our friends had receptions at church.
I was almost 26, and Mark was almost 31. Wow. We were babies. And by our second anniversary, we were pregnant with twins!
So now I’ll ask all of you: what are your secrets to a long and happy marriage? (Or for some of you, maybe it was a short and happy marriage.) What advice would you give a young couple just starting out?
Joe and I had 36 years before Covid took him from me. Communicate! Trust each other and respect each other. Happy anniversary and I loved seeing your photos! My first wedding had a church reception with cake and punch. It was what we did.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! 💕 That’s awesome!
ReplyDeleteI had two marriages, one short and one long (21 years). Both ended badly. I am not a good picker, so I have stayed happily single for 15 years 🙂