In a world of rights and wrongs it’s inspiring to know that 70-year-old marriages don’t have to begin with a fairy tale – instead they can grow from breaking one simple rule.
“We met in November 1944,” said Al Williams, 90, one half of the seven-decades-long marriage. “I was in the navy and Bev was working and we both were roller skating … and in the lady’s choice I asked Bev to skate.”
With a laugh Bev Williams, 88, said, “He started right off with being wrong.”
Al finished her sentence saying, “And I’ve been wrong ever since.”
The Fergus couple has been joking together for 72 years and will be celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary on June 22.
The key to their long-lasting marriage – joking around.
“That’s just us, we do it all the time,” Al said. “Oh we get mad once in a while, just for a change, but that’s all I can say is that we joke a lot.”
The youngest of the couple’s three children, Carol French, explained there was always a lot of respect in the home.
“Our family’s always been nothing but jokes,” French said. “It makes a serious moment less serious when you can keep humour in it. That’s the way we’ve always lived but we always know that there’s love there, there’s always caring, there’s always that.”
Al broke his first rule of the long-time relationship when he asked Bev to dance during the lady’s choice skate at the Royal Alexandra in Hamilton.
“I always went skating two different nights than he went,” Bev said, but fate had something else in mind. “He went the opposite nights than I did and that one night, that’s one night that we [went] to the same one.”
After the 18-year-old Al and 16-year-old Bev skated a few dances Al asked if he could take Bev home.
He had two tickets to a Mark Kenny concert at a later date in his pocket so he gave them to Bev and told her he’d come back to pick her up for the show.
Bev saved the tickets and still has them to this day.
When Al returned to the navy barracks he told his bunk mates, “I just met a girl I’m going to marry.”
Less than two years later his prediction came true.
The following February (1945) Al was sent to Halifax to complete his advanced training in Cornwallis.
“And then he wrote every day when he got down there,” Bev said. He also sent her chocolate bars.
“They sent them to the fellas in the navy and the fellas that were in the services you know, they kept all of that good stuff for them, and so Al would just get some there and he could send them to me,” Bev said. He sent her burnt almond.
“I knew what kind she liked,” he said.
It would be a full year before the couple lived in the same city again. However, they did meet in Montreal for a long weekend shortly after VE Day (May 8, 1945.)
“It was a big trip … We went on that train all night,” Bev said. Even though she travelled with Al’s mother, she still had to ask her own mother for permission.
The couple saw each other again in September 1945 in Hamilton, when Al was on leave for a few weeks. It was then, at his grandfather’s farm, that Al asked Bev to marry him.
“We went up there to the farm for the weekend, the two of us,” Al said. “I remember we’d sit out on the front porch and I asked her if she’d marry me.”
He knew she was going to say yes.
“We kind of half talked about it,” he said. “It wasn’t such a big surprise because we just knew we were meant for each other.”
Al went back to the east coast for another five months until he was discharged in February 1946.
“I worked at Otis Elevator before I went in the navy and I didn’t quit … I come back and I had over five years service,” he said. “So they called me and I went right back to work as soon as I got discharged.”
He was making 52 cents an hour.
On June 22, 1946 the couple was married. Al was 20 and Bev was 18.
“We were married from home and we just had a reception there and everything,” Bev explained. “Just used the yard.”
Bev’s wedding dress was new and her bouquet was filled with red roses.
“She’s always liked red roses,” Al said. “That’s what I get (for) anything that’s really special.”
They moved into a Hamilton apartment. About a year later they bought their first house for $5,100 but had to rent out the top floor and attic to make the mortgage payments.
“We couldn’t get too big a family too fast because we only had the bottom floor,” Al said.
After having their daughter, Lynda Bond, and son, David Williams, the family moved to the house they stayed in for about 20 years. That’s where French was born.
“They moved into David Ave. on the Mountain the day my sister started school and then the day I finished school, finished graduating we moved out of that house,” French said. They moved to Al’s father’s farm.
Like many families, the years were full of traditions. Each summer the family would go to the Crystal Beach amusement park near Niagara for the Otis Elevator picnic.
“That was the highlight of our year,” Carol said. “Really it was.”
They also went to the annual Canusa Games, a sporting event between Hamilton and Flint, Michigan.
After Al retired and Carol moved to Fergus, Al and Bev decided to move to the town as well. That was about 23 years ago. Now the couple is focused on enjoying their family.
Al and Bev have six grandchildren and seven great grandchildren and luckily, Al and Bev are quite comfortable with technology. They use FaceTime on their iPad to see family members that are too far away to visit face to face on a regular basis.
“I think that keeps us young,” Al said in reference to the couple’s technological ways.
After 70 years of marriage Al’s advice for making a marriage last is, “Just don’t get too serious. That’s really all, we just joke. We always did.”
