Coffee in Italy for their 30th
Mike and Sally Dodge are planning to spend their eleven-thousandth date in southern Italy. “We have a date for breakfast every morning,” Mike says. Sally adds, “It’s the simple things that count. Mike brings a cup of coffee to me every morning upstairs in the bathroom.” Mike continues, “You wake up and just try to be nice … try not to unleash your demons on your mate.”
Oct. 23 will mark the couple’s 30th wedding anniversary, and two months later Sally will turn 50. What better place to celebrate than Italy? It’ll be the honeymoon they never had. The two fell in love “over locked oars,” Mike says, on the crew team at Kansas State University in the mid-70s. Sally was first drawn to Mike’s sense of humor – he was the “crew clown.” And Mike was captivated by Sally’s eyes and “her beautiful soul.”
For their first date, fishing on the pond at Mike’s grandfather’s farm outside Salina, Kan., Sally remembers wearing overalls and tying her hair back with a bandana. On the way to the farm, Mike spotted his parents approaching from the other direction in their huge Winnebago.
“I did a U-turn in the middle of I-70 and flagged down my folks so they could meet Sally,” Mike says. Sally remembers being struck by the contrast between her overalls and her future mother-in-law’s coral pantsuit.
Sally and Mike were married in the chapel on the campus of Kansas State University. It was a big day – not only a lovely fall wedding, but also the day of the biggest football game of the season: Kansas State vs. the University of Kansas.
Mike went to the game before the wedding. “I had to do something,” he recalls. “My knees were knocking so hard I could hardly stand.”
Mike’s Aunt Rosie, decked out in a “great hat and purple tennis shoes,” played the organ, and the reception was held at Aunt Joanne’s home – a quiet, low-key, family wedding. They spent their first night at the Ramada Inn in Lawrence, Kan., and were so tired from their “low-key” wedding that they didn’t even say good-night to each other.
Two daughters followed shortly after, and the couple found themselves living in Denver, where Mike, whose bachelor’s degree is in construction science, was working in the corporate world, building high-rises.
Sally remembers, “It hasn’t been all tutti-frutti. People sometimes say, ‘Oh, we never fight.’ Well, I don’t buy that. It’s been worth the fight, but that job took Mike away from the family, and we fought our way through it.”
Sally had the opportunity to work for Mike for a week when his secretary was in the hospital. She says, “I watched him solve problems all day every day that week and realized that when he came home at night, I needed to back off and let him unwind. I was starved for communication on an adult level after being with the babies all day, but that lesson was a real gift, a huge, enlightening experience.”
The young family moved to Coeur d’Alene in 1987. Sally operated Children’s House Pre-School from the schoolhouse in their backyard, and in 1997 Mike started Dodge Construction Co. In May of this year, Sally closed the preschool, and both she and Mike work full time in their construction firm now. Their relationship thrives on the togetherness.
Although the two of them are very different, they balance each other out.
“Sally’s consistent, grounded, upbeat, positive,” Mike explains. “I’m more serious, and somewhat like a Super Ball.” With a grin, he adds, “Secretly, though, behind the scenes, Sally’s nuts!”
Mike says, “When I first saw Sally, I knew my soul mate was here. She smelled right. You know, we’re all just animals under the surface. I married what I needed. There’s always been a lot of passion in our relationship, pure chemical attraction, and it’s still there.”
His appreciation of Sally and of women in general stems from his “great role models.” “I have so much respect for the women in my family. They’re very strong. I love my mother and aunts and study how they’ve survived life with their husbands. They’re all good people who worked at their difficult marriages and stayed together. The sacred feminine, the whole beauty of women, is just being discovered. It’s about time.”
Asked what advice they’d offer to young couples or to their twenty-something daughters who are embarking on “coupled” lives, Sally starts, “We’ve always told the girls to follow their hearts, to trust their first instincts, that listening well is important, that they deserve to be treated well, that mutual respect is key.”
Mike says, “Humor is so important. I’d tell them not to take themselves too seriously, and that when something goes wrong, it’s pretty normal. It’s usually nothing that hasn’t been experienced by other couples. But you really can’t tell anybody anything; they have to figure it out on their own.”
Mike and Sally Dodge have figured it out. That cup of morning coffee on day 11,000 in the bathroom of their Italian villa will be especially strong … a toast to a 30-year affair of the heart.