Longtime Valentines

Terry and Ken Reilly of Vernon met at a bar while with friends. After chatting, Terry wrote her address on a napkin for Ken and the rest is history. In May, they will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.

Question: Tell me how you met?

Ken: How we met? I know, I know how we met. It was after the game.

Terry: Yeah, we met after a softball game. He was playing with an electrical league, one of his customers, and they went out to a bar, and I was at the bar with my girlfriend and they were actually trying to fix their friend up with somebody so the friend came over to me and said, ‘Hey that guy over there thinks you’re cute.’ And I said, ‘Oh, really.’ And then he came over. Ken came over and introduced himself and we just started talking and we talked pretty much all night. And then he asked me out on a date, and I wrote down my address on a napkin.

Q: Tell me about your wedding day?

Ken: (laughing) Well, I knocked the flowers over.

Terry: Our wedding day. It was kind of an overcast day. It was very bittersweet because my mom had passed away just a month before. So I didn’t have her there. It was very emotional for my dad walking me down the aisle and everybody who was there. And all went as expected, and two things that could have been a problem when I went to light the unity candle, my veil swung around and almost hit the flame. So the pastor had to grab it and push it away. And then when we were coming down off the altar, he had tails on his tux and knocked over the big thing of flowers.

Ken: That’s a good one. I do remember because Terry’s Ukrainian. What they do is they come with the tray. Glasses with vodka in them, and it’s like a Ukrainian Russian tradition, that you drink this and she looked at me and she said, ‘You better keep eating bread.’

Terry: So they came to us with the tray and we had to drink the vodka and they sang and I had a little bit of mine. He had his and then he had all of mine, and I did keep saying, ‘Eat bread, eat bread, eat bread.’

Q: What are you most proud of?

Ken: Our faith and our daughter.

Terry: Staying together all this time for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health. And we’ve had them all. All those things we’ve experienced, and staying the course through all of that. Our faith has brought us closer together and I think you know that’s something that has helped us. It’s not an easy thing marriage. You must work at it in the beginning, and it looks like all roses and sunny days. But it’s not so. Stay the course, work at it. And we’re all so proud of our daughter, who’s 33 and on her own.

Q: Who controls the TV remote?

Terry: It used to be me, but now it’s him.

Ken: That’s a good topic here. You know why? You can’t stay awake more than five minutes when the show starts, so she puts something on and then I sneak over and grab it .

Q: How do you not kill each other when conflict inevitably arises?

Ken: You know a lot of people say we’ve been married so long and never had a fight. I don’t believe that from anybody, but I can say that we’ve had disagreements, but we agree that it’s OK to disagree because we resolve it.

Terry: Being able to say you’re sorry is very important and to accept it. We have gone to bed angry, and people say don’t go to bed angry. But sometimes when you go to bed angry, in the morning, it looks a lot clearer and less you know dramatic or whatever you want to call it. Just as the time goes by during the night you just kind of forget about it.

Ken: You realize how petty a lot of it is, you really do. How many married couples argue over silly things, you know? But we all do.

Q: What advice would you give young couples today?

Terry: The advice I would give them is to work at it. It’s not something that comes easy. Stay the course. Be supportive of each other. Come back to your partner if there’s a problem or if anything you know that you’re not agreeing on. Talk about it. Communication I would say is a big thing.

Ken: I would say too: Don’t be afraid to disagree because you’re going to disagree on things. It’s just going to happen and then you have to work it out, that’s all, and some days are great and some days aren’t. But you get through it and go on.

Q: What is it about the other person that you love the most?

Ken: I would say for Terry, it’s her support. She’s a great cook. And she got beautiful eyes. That’s what got me when we met. Her eyes.

Terry: I would say his quirky, weird sense of humor. I would say his ability to be reasonable when I am not. His way of looking at things. Different from the way I look at things. Sometimes I make a big deal out of nothing and he’s able to bring me back to look: This is what we need to do. Don’t get excited. Let’s just do this and everything’s going to be fine.

Q: How do you think those qualities in each other have helped you stay together the past 40 years?

Ken: I think it gets you through a lot of disagreement and situations that are going to come up. And if you can’t work it out together, you’re never going to work it out, but you must put the effort into it, and I think we both do that in a good way.

Terry: I think his sense of humor. Although I’ve heard it for the last 40 years, some of it still makes me laugh. It’s helped us get through our marriage when he Is able to deal with things better than I am because then I can take a step back and look and say, ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s going to be OK.’ We have been through some trials and things like that and with my health and his health and we’ve both been supportive of each other and that’s how it’s helped us stay the course.