Secrets to a long marriage? 3 Tri-Cities couples share their tips for happy lives together

One couple started with a case of mistaken identity.

Another had a slightly rocky start because she thought her school’s sports star was “ornery.”

The third was love at first sight as they exchanged secret looks across the aisle as they played saxophones at church.

But what these three Tri-Cities couples all have in common is long, happy marriages — a total of 186 years of making marriages work.

For Valentine’s Day, the couples, who live at Brookdale, a senior living center in Richland, reminisced about falling in love, staying in love and what it took to make a long and happy life together.

Jack and Maggie Brown

Jack was in graduate school at Iowa State when a pretty girl walking by the library caught his eye.

He searched the yearbook and found a match in Maggie Brown, a fellow graduate student.

He was studying nuclear engineering. She was studying human nutrition.

Maggie would come home from class one day to find her roommates giggling about a man who had called her.

She didn’t know any Jack Brown, she said. But Jack was persistent in his calls, and she eventually agreed to meet him at the student union.

When Jack showed up for their meeting, it appeared he had been stood up. He didn’t see the girl who he had spotted by the library anywhere.

Maggie had skipped out of work to meet him and wondered as she waited and waited if a man she saw walking in and out might be him. When she finally started putting on her coat, very slowly to give him a final chance, he walked over.

“Are you Maggie McKinney?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

Then Jack said the line that started their romance.

“Well, you are not the right girl, but you’ll do,” he said.

Maggie started laughing.

“I thought she had to be a special girl not to be mad at that, and the rest is history,” Jack said.

They met in January and married in May.

Jack said he had a gut feeling that she was the right partner for him.

Maggie said she didn’t realize at the time that his persistent calling to set up a meeting was out of character.

But Maggie’s mother was not happy with the short engagement, following her own 10-year engagement.

The young couple argued with Maggie’s parents until Jack said they’d just get married before a justice of the peace.

They ended up having “a lovely small town wedding” at the Methodist church in Woodpine, Iowa, Maggie said.

What is now Pacific Northwest National Laboratory brought them to the Tri-Cities, Wash. Jack would stay with Battelle, which operates the lab, for 30 years, accepting assignments around the country.

Their favorite time was living in Manhattan for a year when Jack was assigned to the United Nations to help develop nuclear inspection teams to send to Iraq. He also went on inspection trips to Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power.

Some of their best times as a couple came after they became empty nesters, Maggie said.

Raising kids — two sons, a daughter and, for a time, foster children — was “wonderful, but stressful,” Maggie said.

When Jack took an early retirement offer, they decided to build a house together from the dirt up in Depoe Bay, Ore.

People told them not to do it, that it was too stressful for a marriage.

One young woman who walked her dogs past the house said she had divorced her husband after they tried to build a house together in Alaska. After 10 years they still had no indoor plumbing, she said.

“So you better get on the ball, Jack,” she said. At the time they had a porta potty.

Jack said they make a point of spending time together throughout their marriage, doing things as simple as having coffee.

That, taking short trips and doing things for each other, all added up to staying together.

You have to be dedicated to being together, or problems will split you up, he said. Both believed that divorce was unacceptable.

Maggie remembers a church discussion on when young couples would know they should be married.

“Jack said it was not the initial decision, but making it right afterwards,” she said.

Both have flexible views on religion and philosophy, which benefited the marriage, he said. And they communicate frequently.

A sense of humor helps, Maggie said. That was no surprise to other Brookdale residents.

“They laugh together, share life together,’ said Edna Sehmel, a fellow resident.

They have been married for 62 years.

Gerry and Lee Santo

“I knew,” said Gerry the first time he set eyes on Lee when he transferred to her small school on the Big Island of Hawaii.

She was small, good looking, liked to talk and, perhaps most interesting of all to him, very smart.

But Lee was less impressed with the school’s new athletic star as they were assigned to the same group to clean classrooms after school.

“He was just ornery,” she said.

He said she tried to be the boss.

But their school was small and she came around as they spent time in classes together.

She was in no hurry to marry, however.

Her family wanted her to get an education and a good job first.

They got engaged when she earned her master’s in microbiology and then didn’t marry until she had worked for a year.

Gerry is a nematologist, and earned a doctorate at University of California, Davis, in the study of microscopic worms that can attack plants and transmit disease.

He accepted a job offer at the Washington State University Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center and kept it as his first and only job post-graduate school until his retirement.

He became a fixture at Prosser athletic events, starting by taking photos from the sideline of their three sons to chronicle their athletic careers and then continuing to take photos of other Prosser athletes into his 70s.

Their sons and watching them develop their own interests brought both of them great joy, Lee said.

Their marriage benefited from growing up together since their early teens and sharing a similar cultural background and similar values, Lee said.

They married in a Buddhist temple but later as a couple began to explore Christianity and converted.

They agreed on that and other big issues, such as how to raise their sons, Lee said.

When they disagreed, they compromised.

“I feel like forget what happened. Don’t keep score on those things,” Lee said.

They would always discuss major issues together, but Lee left the final decisions to Gerry, she said.

“Be sure you’re good friends,” is Gerry’s advice to couples considering getting married. “And be sure she’s smart.”

Don’t be thinking you are better than your wife, especially in the early years, he said.

“She’s ... a good cook and she tolerates me,” said Gerry, who doesn’t last for more than a few minutes in a discussion without cracking a joke.

“You need laughter in your life,” Lee said.

They have been married for 54 years.

Chico and Molly Gutierrez

Chico was learning the tenor sax and Molly the alto sax as they practiced at their church orchestra.

They liked each other immediately.

“I give her the look,” said Chico.

Molly said she “had eyes for him for a long time,” but he didn’t know it.

Their romance advanced from glances across the aisle to Chico giving Molly and her sister rides home from church. Then he started taking just Molly for drives in his Ford.

“Eventually we just decided to get married,” he said.

They traveled out of state because they couldn’t get married in Los Angeles, although Chico says he can’t remember why now. It likely was because Molly was just 15 and her mother needed to sign an affidavit to allow her to marry in Arizona. Chico was 20.

Molly says she never had any doubts he was the husband she wanted.

“I just knew,” she said. And she liked his green eyes.

chico said he admired “the way she moved around. It was very graceful.”

He worked as a truck driver in California and then for the post office, living for a few years in Tacoma, before settling in Prosser where two of their children had moved. They had two sons and two daughters.

They were retired by then and Molly had fallen and needed fusion of the bones in her neck. Their children wanted them to move closer to family who could help them.

But before that they traveled, which helped keep them close, Molly said.

Chico said their faith helped keep them together through the years. “We believe in God,” he said.

But his philosophy of communication didn’t hurt.

“You give a little, take a little,” he said, and then, grinning, used his thumb and finger to mime zipping his lips.

When the argument is over, say, ‘I’m sorry’,” he said demonstrating his contrite apology voice.

They have been married for 70 years.

This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 5:00 AM.