Sweethearts double-tie the knot
Love is not a box of chocolates or a dozen roses or even a candlelit dinner.
It’s how Orval Wood leans out of his chair to hear Marion, his wife of 55 years, talk. It’s Roy Wickstrom helping Mabel out of her walker. And it’s in Jeanette Tate’s face as she lights up when talking about dancing with her husband, Marlin.
Those couples and four others celebrated more than 300 combined years of marriage Monday in a recommitment ceremony at the Academy Retirement Community, 1216 N. Superior.
Staff members decorated the dining room with flowers and pink and white balloons.
A three-tiered wedding cake waited to be cut. A harpist played Pachelbel’s “Canon.”
“This is more of a wedding than we had the first time,” Roy Wickstrom said as he settled into his spot at the head table.
The Wickstroms, like many of the other couples, got married during hard times. The country was at war. They didn’t have much money.
Mabel had been working in her father’s beet fields when she met Roy at a dance.
“He has got quite a personality and still does,” she said.
At 63 years, Lucille and Marion Owens have been married longer than any of the other couples. Ask Lucille and she’ll tell you they’ve stuck together for one simple reason: “Because we love each other. …
“I wouldn’t trade him,” she said.
“She couldn’t get a good offer,” Marion chimed in.
Love and a good sense of humor are central to a lasting marriage, they said.
Yes, they get angry. They fight. But none of the couples said they ever considered splitting up.
“We’re both stubborn,” Lucille Owens said. “Neither one of us would give up.”
The Woods met a few years after Marion’s first husband died in a crop-dusting accident, leaving her a widow at 30 with an infant.
But then Orval saw her in the restaurant of a Great Falls hotel. He was having a drink with a friend. She was having dinner with her parents. He asked her to dance.
“I said to Earl, ‘She’s the one for me,’” Orval recalled. “I didn’t know how true it was.”
They got married a year later and had four children.
“Everything on TV and radio communication emphasizes the sex thing,” Orval said.
“That’s not what marriage is. It’s a spiritual thing.”
And so he and Marion joined the other couples in front of Darlene Wedge, the community’s administrator who is also an Episcopal deacon.
She looked out at them and smiled as she got ready to lead them in reciting vows.
“I see you’ve all joined hands,” Wedge said. “So I don’t need to tell you that.”
Not this crowd. With 300 years of marriage between them, they’re pros.