45 Years Of Love
My wife Karen and I just celebrated 45 years of marriage. I still remember the day I met her like it was yesterday.
She was wearing a sundress. She had a great tan and her hair was long and beautiful. The first time I saw her was on my college graduation day. I was making my way to the auditorium where the ceremony was taking place. From a distance I saw a couple of friends talking to this creature of beauty. I made a beeline toward them to get a closer look.
As it turned out, this young lady was looking for her cousin whom she had not met. He was graduating with me. When I found out who her cousin was, I immediately made some jokes about him—I knew him really well. Her smile was like rocket fuel to my spirit. We talked for a minute or two and then it was on to the ceremonies. I had a hard time concentrating. I kept thinking about this beautiful girl and whether I’d have a chance to talk to her again.
When the ceremony was over there was a receiving line. It just so happened that the long-lost cousin was standing next to me in line. As the beautiful young lady meandered over toward her cousin, I felt my heart leap. I spun around and said to Gene, her cousin, “Gene, please introduce me to your cousin.” He said no—and he was serious.
Gene said a couple of words to his beautiful cousin and then turned around to talk to someone else. This was my opportunity. I said, “Hi, so I see you met your cousin.” She said, “Yes, can I see your diploma?” My family was waiting in the stands for me. I knew I had to work fast. I said, “Hey, would you like to go to the beach with me sometime?” She said, “Yes.” Next question: “Can I get your phone number?” She wrote it down for me on the graduation program handout. I stuck it in my back pocket like it was the holy grail.
Making my way up into the stands to see my family, my face must have been beaming. My sister said, “Who was that girl?” I gave her a quick synopsis of our brief encounter. Years later my sister said, “I had never seen you so excited about meeting someone.” For the record, my sister had seen me with quite a few girlfriends, but this was different.
The graduation ceremony was on a Saturday. I thought I would play it cool and call this new girl, named Karen, on Monday. On Monday afternoon I loaded my car up with my friends to go surfing. We came down the hill from my college and as we were getting ready to make a turn toward the freeway I saw Karen in a bright orange bikini throwing a frisbee with a couple of guys on a sprawling lawn in front of our college denomination headquarters.
I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car. “Hey Karen, it’s me Steve.” She came over to where we were. Seeing her in that bikini took my breath away. I said, “Hey, wanna go to the beach with us?” She said sure and jumped into the car with me and my buddies. After surfing, Karen and I went out on our first official date to the Crepe Place in Santa Cruz. I think it took me somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes to fall in love with Karen.
Even though I was in love with her, there were some things I had to work out in my head. I wanted to marry Karen, but a couple of years earlier I had almost married someone else. It was a total disaster and the experience made me kind of skittish. Over the next 8 months I broke up with Karen a few times. Karen says it was five times, but I wasn’t counting.
One day in early June I made a decision to ask Karen to marry me. I marked the date down on the paper calendar hanging on my office wall. September 20, 1980 would be our wedding date if Karen said yes.
I’m not much for romantic lines, so I asked Karen to marry me in a comical way. I said, “Hey, wanna go to Mexico with me?” I was a youth pastor at the time, so taking off to Mexico with my girlfriend was out of the question. She started laughing and said, “And how are we going to do that?” I said, “Well you know, we’ll just make it legal before we go.” She kept laughing and I said, “Here I am asking you to marry me and you’re laughing at me.” She finally realized I was serious and, to my utter joy, she said yes.
A lot has happened in the last 45 years. We raised four children. We went through some serious struggles in year 14 of our marriage, but love held us together. Today we have six grandchildren. Our youngest son Caleb is still single, but it’s only a matter of time before he gets married and, between him and our middle son Stevie, I think more grandchildren might be in our future.
The best decision I’ve made in my life—besides following Jesus—is to marry Karen. It’s been a wild ride, but there is no one in the world I would have rather done it with.
Steve