In 1947, a young woman named working at the Phoenix Theater in Arizona dropped six bags of popcorn when a man named Tom Abbot walked in the front door. Though she already had a boyfriend, she knew she loved Tom a great deal. Three months after they started dating, they eloped to another town so that her mother wouldn’t see the marriage license in the newspaper.
60 Years Later
60 years later, they celebrated their anniversary by returning to the courthouse they eloped to and renewing their vows. Considering the fact that she was 17 and he was 20 in 1947, the chances of such a marriage surviving today are pretty slim. They barely knew each other, can you imagine getting married to someone you’d only known three months?
So how did Tom and Virginia do it?
They made commitment and love their number 1 priority. Divorce was not a word that entered into their dictionary. Tom told her and their guests that he didn’t measure success by where they lived or what they had:
Success is not what you have … to me, it’s who you have.
Together, the couple have four children, sixteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren. They kept their marriage a secret at first, intending to only tell her parents after she turned 18. Virginia spilled the news when she heard her parents commenting on their neighbor’s choice for marriage. When Virginia blurted out the news that she was married.
Her family finally decided to leave the young couple alone, figuring they wouldn’t last six months. Sixty years later – wow. It’s stories like this that remind us we can make our marriages work, we focus on the love, the commitment and we don’t give ourselves an easy out.
No, not all marriages work out and sometimes, you can’t help it. But other marriages do and those marriages should inspire us. So a toast to Tom and Virginia and their 60 years of love, commitment and family.
Check out more Marriage in the News articles.