Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days. To the millennial mind, the thought of being married for 60 years may seem utterly impossible. After all, they say, what’s the point of getting married when it seems nearly every other person divorces? Marriages certainly crumble, though sometimes a marriage may last. For four couples in Northeast Ohio, their marriages have lasted. All four couples are evangelical Christians. Not all their tales are of wedded bliss. They believe that faith in God, hard work and a true, faithful love that gives of itself makes them successful in their marriages. To consider the wisdom of these elderly couples, as that verse encourages, may behoove millennials. The verse that immediately follows it perfectly describes all four couples’ understanding of life and marriage. With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding.
Jerry and Carole Pittis: Love at First Sight
Jerry Pittis had a date.
With a blonde. He worked hard to get that date. But before he went on the date, he donned his dress clothes to be the best man in his friend’s wedding in Uhrichsville.
Meanwhile, up in Lakewood, Carole had a break, Christmas break, and she wanted to savor the last days of it.
“You’re coming to the wedding,” her roommate Barb told her.
“Oh, Barb,” Carole resisted her. “I need this time.”
“I’m coming to get you,” Barb insisted.
Carole gave in and dragged herself to the wedding of Barb’s brother. At the wedding, Jerry saw a girl with dark brown hair. Carole was her name, and she looked familiar since he saw her at the girls’ apartment when he dropped by once. She looked a little different this time though, wearing her dress clothes instead of sitting on the apartment floor in sloppy clothes. Jerry abandoned that date with the blonde straightaway.
They went out with others after the wedding. They ate, and polka music floated through air. He wanted to learn to dance. She tried to teach him, but he didn’t learn. On the next date, he took her to see a Russian ballet downtown.
Love at first sight Jerry calls it, back when he saw her at the apartment with the hole in one sock.
About six decades later, around a curve of a street in Bedford, the white house sits supremely. Up the driveway, a large O is painted on the garage door, and inside, the red and grey of Ohio State pops out again and again. Jerry and Carole live here, as Mr. and Mrs. Pittis, married for 57 years.
During her Ohio State years, Carole shook hands at a pep rally with football coach Woody Hayes, to the delight of Mr. Pittis. He says that’s why he married her.
In their early 80s, Carole and Jerry trod into their non-denominational church each Sunday. Every other month, they stand at the big doors in the foyer, Carole gripping her walker, and a tall, thin Jerry jovially elbow-bumping church goers (to evade the flu). He likes to joke with the incoming attendees—he makes a joke of everything, Carole thinks. He cackles regularly, his laughter sometimes turning into something like an owl’s hoot.
In the earlier days, they weren't as committed to their faith. Carole’s voice still cracks when she remembers how she walked up, hardly knowing it, to answer an alter call after she heard the Gospel. And years later, as Jerry stared at a clock on the wall, waiting for the Sunday Bible group to let out, a warm feeling rushed over him, and he realized he loved Jesus. Now they pray, and read the Bible together daily.
When the kids were young, they struggled. Carole cried over difficulties with discipline, and Jerry worked at his job all the time. So she prayed, and he kept working. Now one of their grown sons, who’s divorced, calls his parents’ marriage remarkable.
Another struggle, Carole thinks, is to be good Christian examples to some in their own family who have wandered from the faith. And Carole and Jerry notice the trend, even in their own family, of younger people living together before getting married.
Mr. Pittis is not fond of another trend in younger people: facial hair. When he met Carole, his brown hair was neatly put in a crew cut, his face cleanly shaven. He can’t fathom what girls see in a man with scruff. He shakes his head from his Ohio State armchair and says wryly: “An’ when ya kiss, you’d think that’d scratch your face and so forth. That would really mess up the situation.”
Then Carole injects a statement about the album she flips through. She looks at pictures of their trip to Scotland and England with their Scottish friends Mary and Bobby. The trip lasted five weeks, and even with an unfortunate mishap with “this dumb guy” at the petrol station mistakenly filling up their camper’s water tank instead of the gas tank (rendering the showers and facilities unusable), the visits to ornate castles were a great success.
Carole fondly studies the photos. Then the phone rings. Mr. Pittis thinks it must be Woody Hayes’ wife calling.
With her sciatica, traveling is harder. Often, Carole sinks into the the checkered couch, and Jerry relaxes in his armchair as they enjoy the Hallmark channel. They watch birds outside the front window, they do garden club activities, they read books and he collects stamps and model railroads. She cooks. For Easter, they feast on lamb, ham and salmon—she thinks it’s good for married couples to spend Christmas and Easter with family.
Jerry has a foot problem, but he still drives Carole, partially since, she thinks, he can’t stand her driving. She says, “In sickness and in health, we’ve both taken care,” and Jerry finishes the last part with her, “care of each other.”
Then he quickly says, “She takes care of me better than I take care of her, so.”
She chuckles softly and starts to say, “No, you take….”
“Well, she cooks, but I, well, I can’t,” Jerry says. “I can boil stuff, hot dogs, hamburgers, but that’s about it.”
“We do everything together now, almost everything,” Carole says.
One thing peeves Mr. Pittis. “My main problem with Carole is always she’s running late,” he states.
Carole smiles. “Always one more thing to do before,” she says.
“Today for once we were on time for the pancake breakfast before our friends got there, which is very unusual,” he says.
No matter the squabble they may have on the drive to morning church, they hold hands in the service, only partly for Carole’s balance.
Marriages today: Love at Risk
239. That’s the cumulative number of years that these four couples, all in their eighties, have been married. The usual number of years, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, that couples stay married before divorce? Eight.
At the Reeves’ home, three brown cookies with chocolate drizzled over top serenely sat on the counter. Shirley unwrapped them and explained that they were her son’s special recipe. When she inquired for the recipe, her son, a professor at University of Akron, slyly replied that he could give her the recipe, but then she’d have to be executed. She said oh and let the recipe topic go.
The secret ingredient of a successful marriage seems as hard to unearth. Many causally comment, “It’s just true love,” shrug and move on. For the Pittis,’ Siskas, Reeves’ and Newcombs, love for each other undoubtedly watered their married life, yet for them “true love” was more than just warm, wafting feelings. Deeper than emotion, actions and commitment accompanied their love.
The Pittis’ worked and prayed. The Reeves learned to forgive. The Siska’s traveled and spent time with each other. The Newcombs kept their vows seriously.
With the 32 percent national divorce rate, and the just six percent of couples who reach their fiftieth anniversary, long marriages like these burst the norm. When young Christians are committed to their faith, the Institute for Family Studies (a marriage and family research group) finds their marriages are significantly more stable. In fact, the divorce rate is 16 percent for young conservative Protestants active in their churches, while the divorce rate is 11 points higher for non-religious young people, at 27 percent.
In their young married life, the four couples think that their level of commitment to Christ was questionable; most were not dedicated Christians when they first got married. They all did have points in their lives when they did commit, and they say that their lives and marriages much improved afterward.
Now in their eighties, the four couples still faithfully plod into church each Sunday. This month, March, is Jerry and Carole Pittis’ month to greet newcomers in the foyer. Frank Siska ushers in the church-goers every Sunday morning at the early 8:15 service with a hearty hello. For years, the Pittis’ and Newcombs used to teach the kids who came on Thursday mornings with their mothers for a Bible study, until, as Mr. Newcomb says, they got too stiff to squish in at the low tables with the kids. The Newcombs and Reeves’ sit across from each other in the same life group each Sunday morning. Every other week, the Pittis,’ Reeves’ and Newcombs see each other yet again, this time at a Wednesday night Bible study hosted in the Reeves’ home.
“We just love each other because we’re all believers and have that wonderful thing in common,” Mrs. Newcomb says. On the Newcombs’ laundry machine, a folded pair of green St. Patrick’s Day socks sit, a gift to warm the Irish heart of Mr. Newcomb. Guess who gave him those he says. He gleefully answers, “Mrs. Pittis.”
It was raining.
Frank remembers it a miserable day in April, that day he and Barbara got married. Somehow, even though he was from “the hood” in Cleveland, and she from the classy Shaker Heights, she chose him. Even with his leather jacket and motorcycle boots, she chose him. But before she said yes, he had competition. From Ronny.
Ronny could have ruined it all. She seemed to like him too. When his rival went off to the army, and left Barbara all to him, Frank was relieved.
More than 60 years later, Frank uses his storytelling voice to tell the tale of himself, Ronny and Barbara as he sits with a red plaid button-down over a peach shirt. Barbara says little as she faces him and listens to his solid voice, laughing quietly at the appropriate junctures. Alzheimer’s blurs the memories in Mrs. Siska’s mind, and she strains to say what she wants to say. Yet she pours her own coffee in the morning and lightly puffs her white hair with curled figures at the mention of photos.
Mr. Siska pauses dramatically, letting relief over Ronny’s departure sink in for only a moment before blurting, “But then he came back.”
That’s when she had to choose.
“Him.” Barbara pipes up, pointing to the blue-eyed man sitting across from her, her eyebrows raised, uttering that one word with confidence. Of course she chose Frank, the dark-haired Czech.
Frank describes his family as laborers and her family as “high rollers”—her father wasn’t keen on his daughter’s troublemaker boyfriend. But with few good-looking guys in Shaker (in Frank’s eyes), well, Barbara fell in with the bad mix. She attended Kent State and became a secretary for Republican Steel. He dropped out of Kent, cut meat for the original Mr. Heinen of Heinen’s grocery and then excavated later in life. Opposites attract, he says.
After the ceremony, Frank remembers his new father-in-law sponsored little “hors d’oeuvre-ies” at the church, and then they went back for a big party at his father’s house where guests gathered inside the house (the furniture had been deposited on the lawn). After a week in Florida with Barbara, Frank set off for the Mediterranean with the Navy. During the six months away from his new wife, he loaded atomic bombs onto aircraft carriers.
Even though many of their friends divorced, and even their own son divorced after five children, Frank and Barbara stayed together. Frank notices money is something young couples inordinately obsess over, and instead of saving up, like he did, he says that they work and work, often relinquishing their kids to daycare.
At the top of the church aisle he stands sturdy, leather vest, western tie, eyeglasses covering a good part of his face. He welcomes fresh arrivals, handing out bulletins: shakes a hand, how do you do, gives a hug.
Music starts and he waits for more to walk down the aisle. The electric guitars and drums pound melodiously. Greater than my deepest needs, the ground beneath my feet, Your promises won’t fail me now. He moves his shoulders in time with the sound, dancing just a little. And so through all the length of days His goodness faileth never, Good Shepherd may I sing Your praise within your house forever. The rhythm slows. Within your house forever. And he says, “Amen.”
Here is where Frank ushers most morning services, sometimes handing out Jolly Ranchers to the kids. Before they came to Parkside Church, they left a church where the head usher disapprovingly criticized his loud clothing.
Frank and Barbara used to enjoy their camper on their plot of ground in Arizona, but now it’s hard to go. Frank looks forward to taking Barbara to visit their granddaughter in California for a few months—wine and the hot tub sound just right to him.
For now, a fan hums in the Siska’s living room, spreading the warmth from the wood-burning stove. To the side of the room rests a large safe with 10 guns—they used to love to go to shooting together with friends. Once, he butchered the moose he’d shot on a mountain in Montana, but she was a better shot than he. Barbara held the national women’s shooting record with 62 shots in a row from 60 meters, over half a football field, at a target the size of the tip of Mr. Siska’s pinky finger.
Yes, they had exciting, pleasant adventures together, even if it’s a little slow now, he says. He gazes at her with a little smile. He makes much of her, telling how she earned a masters degree in pastoral psychology later in life from Ashland Theological Seminary.
They had rifts along the way, sure. When they argued, he’d generally lose—what else was there to do, he figured. “‘Course, being married to somebody that lives in a sewer, that’s a little difficult, too,” he says, concerning one of his previous occupations.
She quietly illustrates the bumps in their marriage, floating her gnarled fingers through the air, up and down.
He still calls her baby.
Marriage suggestions: Love by the Book
Storms accompanied each of the four marriages. For Sallie Newcomb, it seemed she always had to be the discipliner, and her husband got to be the fun playmate for the kids. The Pittis’ had problems with discipline too.
As Helen Wilmot says, kids can complicate relationships. She and her husband, Dennis, are pre-marital counselors—they love trying to help people understand the Biblical roles of husbands and wives so that their marriages can flourish. The Wilmots are in their 60s and have counseled for 34 years at Parkside Church, a large evangelical church in Bainbridge. They, along with others who have been married for a long time, meet with almost-married couples, eat dinner with them and try to show them what a Christian marriage might look like. Much of what the Pittis,’ Siskas, Reeves’ and Newcombs described in their marriages is what the Wilmots, who have been married for 41 years, suggest for younger marriages.
Trends that the Wilmots notice in young couples, even ones who grow up in church, include rapid increases in women who fixate obsessively on careers and couples who live together before they get married. Student loans of $50,000 to $100,000, Dennis says, makes women feel that it’s especially necessary to tackle a big career. But Wilmots also see that when couples fight materialism and discontentment, and when wives accept Biblically-based priorities to their families first, and careers second, marriages run smoother.
For the many couples who live together before they’re married, Helen tries to tell them that it’ll be much better if they move out, and make sure their relationship is built on love, not just a sexual relationship. She’s watched marriages leap unmistakably in success and length when this advice is taken, which matches Pew’s findings that couples stay together more often when the choice is made to abstain from living together before marriage.
Dennis Wilmot talks to the couples about helping the other person to become more holy, even if that might not make that person happy all the time. As Christians, he explains, the goal of a marriage is for both people to become more and more like Christ.
Commitment is extremely important, he says. He asks couples to imagine divorce to be a capital offense, punishable by death. Here the couples snicker. Then he says, “There is no back door—there is no ‘if’ clause.” Even forget for a moment, he persists, the possibility of unfaithfulness as reason for divorce, and be committed. If this is the mentality, the vows (in sickness and in health…forsaking all others…till death do us part) come freshly alive.
Dennis forges on. A forest of dissent from current culture might hail these ideas as outlandish, but he and his wife watch marriages blossom with acceptance of this advice. Along with commitment to vows, he says that the two people stand together at a wedding ceremony in front of God and others and make a covenant, a promise to love, honor and obey for the rest of their days. He adds that it shouldn’t be a conditional love (if you make me happy, then I’ll love you)—but a love that, in a way, is a picture of the sacrificial kind of love that God showed humanity in giving them Jesus.
Small things, like thinking before speaking, or being slow to get angry as it says in the Bible, are also very important, Dennis believes. And Helen knows relationships flourish with clear communication and oneness in the marriage.
Helen says that one secret to a successful marriage is a love that grows with each day. For her, Dennis is her best friend—she says she loves him so much more now than when she married him 41 years ago. They do everything together.
Merle and Shirley Reeves: Love Committed
He sat in their bedroom.
“I can’t stop drinking,” he confessed to his wife Shirley. They’d retreated to their room where serious matters were discussed.
She’d known it was bad. She tried to tell him. But he wouldn’t listen.
The harping irritated him. Then something inside his head told him, “Merle, you keep this up, you’re not gonna live past 50.”
So they called their daughter, Cheryl, who took him to Alcoholism and Its Cure, a program at a church called the Gospel House. Through that program, he gave his life to Christ. As for the drinking? He stopped cold.
His wife couldn't believe her eyes—all the books would suggest side effects for such a sudden stop. Sometimes she’d greet him with a kiss after he came home from golfing, and wasn't it to see if his breath smelled like alcohol? But no, he really did it. She decided it was a miracle from God.
They removed all the “top of the shelf” scotch from cupboards and deposited it in a corner in the basement. Sometimes he’d be lured down to gaze at it. Finally he decided to get rid of it all. Maybe he’d give it to his friends, he thought, but no, why give them the problem? Down the drain it went. Shirley figured the garbage men must’ve thought they had quite the party.
He seemed to Shirley to be a new man. He was so much better than before. He’d always been gentle and steady—that’s what she’d liked about him—the complete opposite of her abusive father. But now!
Now, years later, they look at each other across the table frequently. “I have never seen a person who drank like that, change like that, so fast—it had to be God,” she says. “We know it was God.” Her eyes sparkle underneath gray, white-streaked hair. “He’s a sweet man,” she says. “He’s a good man.” And then with a wholehearted laugh, “He always was a good man—sometimes a drunken man—but he was always a good man.”
Merle’s gentle steadiness appealed to her, after her uneasy childhood. Shirley’s father abused her mother, threatened his children and finally shot himself in the head and was blind for years. Her mother wouldn’t leave him. Shirley couldn’t understand why not. Her mom told her: “I took a vow when I was married. In sickness and in health. And he’s sick.” Seeing that commitment helped Shirley in her own marriage, though she says Merle is “certainly not a violent man.”
Nowadays, Shirley says, at the first whisper of an argument, couples flee toward divorce. “It’s not a bed of roses,” she says. “It really isn’t. It takes work. And people don't think so.” She and Merle never spoke of divorce.
It was a blind date when they first met.
She was supposed to go with Jim. At the last instant her roommate, who was doing the setting-up, switched her to Merle. He was taller after all. That fit the 5-foot-11 Shirley better. She was the nurse on call at the hospital that night, so he came and watched TV in the hospital basement. She thought he seemed polite and sweet. He thought she was nice to have around.
Days passed, 365 of them, and they saw each other every day. Her mom loved him too, more than she loved her daughter, Shirley thought. Eventually (and Shirley laughs at how different this is done now), they strolled through the living room, he handed her a ring, said, “Here, will ya marry me?” and she said, “Yeah!” Since Shirley wanted to marry a Lutheran, Merle was confirmed, baptized and married all in one week.
Now, she grimaces to think of the other guy, Jim, who was not her “cup of tea.” Merle, on the other hand, was. They've been married 62 years, and they can’t believe it’s been that long. He was 22, and she was 20 when they got married—they grew up together, she says. She doesn’t think she’d have made it all these years without him.
Every day, Merle treks three-tenths of a mile to be the school crossing guard. On the cold, windy days, Shirley thinks he looks 300 pounds in all the coats. Even before he was a committed believer, Merle used to wake their five little children on Sunday mornings, hand them glasses of orange juice at the door and sit them in the front pew by 8 a.m. Always the early bird, he still walks with Shirley into their non-denominational church, Parkside, for the 8:15 service.
Sunlight floats through the window on a cold day in March. A train blows in the distance, as Merle and Shirley sit across from each other at the wooden table. Shirley’s tan, Bohemian face often turns toward Merle’s own smooth face, framed by neatly combed, thick white hair. Shirley’s gold earrings hang above her royal blue sweater, which complements his darker navy sweater—often they come out of their respective closets on Sunday mornings, look at each other and realize they match. A shelf above them holds an old, Butter Wafers tin. No noise comes from a room to the left, the dining room, but on many Wednesday nights, the Bible study friends congregate there, by the food.
Once a house saturated in green (Shirley still shudders deploringly to think of all that avocado green), a note of the color hardly remains, except perhaps for the green plants spilling and crawling over each other near the front window. A smoke-free, alcohol-free home, Shirley calls it, with only the wine she uses for her spaghetti sauce.
Finances, Merle says in his warbling voice, are the hardest struggle—they’ve no retirement account themselves, though Shirley jokes that she feels wealthy when the $43.78 comes each month from her past career. Discipline to not spend what they didn't have helped them get by, and, she says, God always took care of them. Years of fixing up their own house, she sees, contrasts with the instant mansions millennials now demand.
Loving, respecting, listening must be part of a good marriage, she says. “But some of these young kids—they get married, and it’s all roses,” she says sagely. “And then they have their first fight, and they end up in a divorce court. You can’t do that. You made a commitment to the Lord. You took a vow.”
Shirley lists important things to learn to say for young married couples and pauses between each, punctuating them with a touch of her hand to the table: “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have said that. And I forgive you. Do you forgive me?”
The one secret to their long marriage?
“Guess we’d have to say God,” Merle said. “Jesus.”
“Yep,” she agreed.
“And it took us a long time to find him,” he added.
It was half past 11 at night. He stood at the pay phone and gave the operator the number. He waited.
Yes, he’d like to speak to Sallie. She’s home? Super, may he come over? Good, be there in a jiffy.
Moments before, he sat at the bar, despondent. Only two girls seemed to grace the vast engineering school he attended. A friend, sitting with him at the bar, felt sorry for his predicament: Well he knows a girl, Gloria, and she’s got a nice roommate, Sallie’s her name, why doesn't he give him her number.
And then he knocked. That same night he called, he stood on her doorstep. He went in. Both pairs of blue eyes met. She’d gotten home from her nursing job at the hospital. He thought she looked nice. She liked his easy-going nature. And she smiled.
One year, one month and one day later, they married. Now, 59 years later, their heads tilted back on a couch and armchair, they turn toward each other, and giggle together, almost like they’ve just met each other, or maybe like they've been the best of friends for ages.
Sallie was 22 when she met the 27-year-old Korean War veteran. Now, she’s 82. Robert is 87.
Earlier today, Robert went back to the dentist for a root canal. Both his and Sallie’s teeth are under repairs, and they find it almost humorous how much time and money they spend on teeth. At least they have each other, they concluded on the drive home from the root canal.
Considering the appointment, their normal devotional had been put on hold. Now that they’re retired, they can spend much of the morning digging in the Bible, learning new things. They love it.
They weren’t Christians when they got married, but they’d go to the Presbyterian church once their oldest was born. Robert was a deacon, and little did Sallie know, he’d sit in the back on a bench before the collection, puffing cigarettes with the other deacons. Their lives radically changed once they became “true followers of Christ.” He used to be quiet. Then he started talking with the kids more. He used to drink, especially on his business trips with other businessmen. Eventually he gave that up, deciding it wasn’t worth it.
Though her own mother had been married twice and divorced twice, and even in the worse times, like alcohol problems, and dealing with wayward children and not being in touch with a daughter for years, no whispers of divorce murmured.
Love forever, Sallie calls it.
Past the flitting red, white and blue flag on the outside of the white condo, and through the front windowpanes, like at the Reeves home, green plants bloom, a thick-leafed succulent among them. At a table close to the plants, Mr. Newcomb sits in the light from the window. Beyond him, farther into the home, a long table bears numerous photos of family, with the frames covering most of the surface.
Robert and Sallie’s daughter has an 17-year-old son, Bob, who has special needs, and last spring Bob's mother, separated from her husband, wanted them to come to their grandson’s “Jesus Prom”—a big, high-school prom-like event for people with special needs at a church in Green. So they went. Lights draped over the walkway railings at the event, and limousines pulled each guest around the parking lot, finally dropping them off to walk up into the church amidst cheers. Church members were paired with each person with special needs for the night. The love abounded—Sallie could feel it—even in the little things, like shining of shoes and rides in a horse-drawn buggy that made the night so festive.
Robert and Sallie joined the kids on the dance floor. Music from the church’s praise team played. It was easy enough to figure out the moves, Sallie thought: All the kids were doing was pumping their arms up and down, so she jerkily followed suit, her hands pushing through the air in little fists.
Bob, blessed with a beautiful personality in Sallie's mind, once told his mother he wanted to be baptized. He stood up in front of others in the summer at an evening Bible school, and answered the question “What did Jesus do for you?” He said simply, “He died on a cross for me.” (Robert and Sallie thought it remarkable he understood and were so happy that he said it.)
At Christmas time, when the visiting family made the usually open-feeling rooms feel closer, Sallie remembers seeing something that made her heart feel at once both sadness and pleasure. Bob sat between two couples—their grandson and his wife and another granddaughter with her boyfriend. Posing for a picture, both guys had their arms around Bob, sandwiched like a hotdog between them.
Sallie is glad that it’s the first day of spring. She loves the color green. All those years ago, she picked out bridesmaid dresses for her late January wedding in 1959. The dresses were of royal green silk—she thought that was a nice, brighter shade. The sweater she wears now is pink, but a bit of sage green from the collar of a polo peeks out at the neck, just below her short, straight, grey-white hair. Her jeans and white tennies match Robert’s jeans and white tennies.
Robert’s politeness, a thing that drew her to him at the first, reveals itself even these days when he opens a door and ladies thank him. When they married, Robert’s mother was glad, Sallie’s possessive mother less so. When their hearts wrenched from family crises, God kept his promise to be with them, and Sallie now realizes God’s timing is perfect. Little, silly squabbles unsettle them the most now, but keeping sight of what’s important, and what’s not, helps. “You know, there’s good and the bad—it just gets better and better as you go on,” Robert said. “It’s just getting through the hard years.”
Failing teeth and frequent trips to the dentist don't keep them from seeing these as delightful years. The two take walks around a pond in the North Chagrin Reservation, and when their conversation and laughter reaches the ears of others at the park, the other walkers turn their heads to look at the couple. An almost strange sight it is: a twosome together, in their eighties, happy like teenagers.
They wish only to die holding hands.