Jean and I will have been married over 90 years as you read this. (Not all of those years to each other.) I was married 39 years previously and she was 35 years. May 19th we will have been married 16 years together. We met online. I lived in Battle Creek, Michigan and she lived in Hillsborough, North Carolina. It was 1998 and I had just given a speech at the National Safety Congress and some fellow asked me if I would like to travel to Australia and give a series of Safety Speeches. He was just checking on fees and availability and such. It was a very tentative thing but it led me to check out the Internet for information on travel in Australia. Jean had just sold her travel agency and was helping the new owner and she knew a lot about Australia and darned if, through the miracle of the Internet, we got together. She asked me a lot of questions and I asked her a lot of questions and in time we stopped talking about travel and started asking about each other.
Well, we both must a liked the answers we were getting from each other because we soon got together and we’ve been together ever since. That prospect never did hire me to speak in Australia. We went there later as tourists. In fact, it seems like we went almost everywhere together. To the Artic Sea at Norway, To England and Turkey and Greece and New Zeeland and yes, all over the Carribean and Hawaii and many of the New England States and a mess of National Parks and I worked for the Army and Navy and Marines and Air Corps and for so many wonderful organizations. We rendezvoused in Mexico City, honeymooned in Wyoming and Estes Park, Colorado and gol dang, come July our collective age will be 170 and we ain’t done travelin’ yet.
I figure our sixteen years married is a good start.
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