What is the key to everlasting love?

Susan Schell

of the Gateway

Bob and Ella Mary Thorpe

Married 72 years

No one has the secret formula for everlasting love. If they did, they’d be kazillionaires. But couples who have been married for 50, 60, even 70 years, just might know a thing or two about it — for they’ve found it.

Bob and Ella Mary Thorpe met while they attended Stanford University, and once they started dating, they never looked back.

“After we met, we never had any other dates (with anyone else), except the commitments we already had on the books,” Bob said. “We met at Thanksgiving, got engaged in May and married in August.”

“We just got started and didn’t want to quit,” Ella Mary said. “When you got a good thing, you don’t change.”

It was Thanksgiving break, and the two college students couldn’t fly home to see their families. Bob’s friend was dating Ella Mary’s roommate, and he called upon Bob to even out the foursome.

Both say the attraction was immediate, and their relationship was relaxed and natural.

“We knew we were going to get married long before we got engaged,” Bob said.

Ella Mary’s new boyfriend was a hit with her parents, especially her mother.

“We just sort of flowed together,” Ella Mary said. “My father recognized it, too. When my folks came out for graduation, my dad pulled me aside and said, ‘You better marry him before your mother does.’ ”

Relaxing in their country-style home with a private dock that overlooks the water of Gig Harbor bay, where they have lived since 1970, the couple knows they’ve been very lucky. The house was one of the first homes built on the east side of the harbor.

“Our hearts go out to friends who had solid marriages that were broken by death,” Bob said. “We know we have been extremely fortunate to both reach the 90s together.”

They don’t offer deep, philosophical explanations of why their love has lasted, just simple timeless observations.

“We were temperamentally suited for each other and shared the same outlook on life,” Bob said.

“You have to have consideration for the other person,” Ella Mary added.

Both look genuinely puzzled about the common notion that relationships require a lot of work.

“It’s not a job,” Ella Mary said. “There’s no work involved if you’re considerate and it’s reciprocated.”

Through the years, if one of the two was annoyed with the other, they let them know in loving, humorous ways. Ella Mary recalled one time, in the early days of their relationship, when she felt Bob was drinking too much at a dinner party. Ella Mary plucked a few flower pedals from the table arrangement and put them in his drink.

Bob attributes 45 years of sailing together as a key factor in their longevity. While boating is mostly recreational, sailing requires teamwork.

Their good friend, Ed Hoppen, taught them the craft.

“We didn’t know the first thing about sailing,” Bob said. “We were total knuckleheads.”

“If you can’t cooperate, you can’t sail,” Ella Mary said. “Guy said the way you learn to sail is to race. After five years of racing, we finally won our first race.”

Ella Mary went on to become one of the co-founders of the Tacoma Women’s Sailing Association.

Their first sailboat, “Pirouette” is now the star of the EddonBoat’s hands-on boatbuilding class.

Bill and Nancy Winter

Married 50 years

Fate was set in motion when Nancy Gist pulled into a gas station in Tacoma with her father in their Volkswagen bus. When she told the young man who was washing the windows and checking the oil that she was planning to go play golf, he said matter-of-factly, “You don’t play golf in the winter. You ski.”

Bill Winter invited her on a ski trip with a bunch of friends. Nancy was reluctant, but her friends urged her to go along and just have a good time.

The Winters celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last August.

Bill was drafted into the U.S. Army while the couple was still dating. Right after their honeymoon, they moved to Williamsburg, Va., where he was stationed. But Nancy had a surprise in store for her. Her brand-new husband informed her that he was going on a 10-day road trip with his Army baseball team.

“I didn’t even know he played baseball,” she said. “I wasn’t about to let him go on a road trip without me.”

It wasn’t exactly the Army’s policy to let wives go along on road trips. But Bill pulled some strings to appease his new bride, a fact that somewhat bewilders him to this day.

From then on, whenever the team hit the road, Bill was absent from the team bus, but he magically showed up at the games in a Volkswagen bus, with Nancy in tow.

The couple, relaxing in the kitchen of their rural Gig Harbor farmhouse, seemed at a loss for words as they recalled highlights of their relationship, because there are just too many to recount.

The barn in back of the house was once part of a working farm. Bill dragged his wife, kicking and screaming, from Fircrest to the backcountry across the bridge.

“I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “I had a social life there. My purse matched my shoes.”

“We didn’t know the first thing about farming,” Bill said.

Bill joined the Western Farmers, and the couple eventually ended up with a small farm, complete with cows, goats, pigs and rabbits.

“Then there was the ultralight phase,” Bill said as he recalled buying a small airplane.

The farm didn’t provide quite enough acreage for a runway. But his next-door neighbors allowed him to use their land for takeoffs. The two farms together provided enough of an airstrip for the ultralight to get airborne.

“Oh, and then there was the motorcycle phase,” Bill recalled. “I can’t believe I got her on the back of a bike.”

But after she rode with her husband up to Mount Rainier, Nancy fell in love with motorcycle travel.

Throughout their relationship, Bill played baseball, amassing a slew of championship rings and trophies. The pair traveled the world together to attend his games. He was recently inducted into the National Senior Baseball Hall of Fame in Oklahoma.

“We do everything together, not because we have to, but because we want to,” Bill said. “We just seemed to fit. You get used to being together, and that’s the way you want it to be.”

“I was born and raised Catholic, and we understood that when we said ‘I do,’ it was forever,” Nancy said. “It’s so sad, because nowadays, society and TV teaches these kids that if they’re not happy, get out.”

Bill said marriage isn’t always a 50-50 proposition.

“Give and take is a big part of it,” he said.

“God plays a big role in it,” Nancy said. “Sometimes things look bleak, but then everything falls into place. Sometimes you just have to get through today, and tomorrow’s another day.”

John and Millie Killoran

Married 70 years

John and Millie Killoran still have the tiny sepia-and-white photograph of them squished into a picture booth together at the Puyallup Fair in 1938. It was their first date.

John, seated with his wife at a table at the Roadhouse on the Hill restaurant, where they celebrated their 70th anniversary last summer, pulled out his wallet and showed off two more frayed-edged photos of Millie as a young woman.

“He’s carried those around for 70 years,” his wife said.

Each was born and raised in Tacoma.

“We have the webbed feet to prove it,” Millie said.

The Killorans were neighbors in high school when John asked Millie to go to the fair. They can’t really say if they were dating from that point on, as their relationship developed at its own fair pace without an immediate name stamp or approval rating on it.

“Things were more casual then,” John said.

“We didn’t go steady or anything like that,” Millie said. “We didn’t need to. We just knew we were going to be together forever. You just know.”

With the Great Depression still looming, the young couple reveled in spending time together. Millie believes couples today have so many wants and needs that they have a hard time just “being.”

“We spoiled all these kids,” she said. “They wouldn’t know what to do in a depression. I feel sorry for them. We did a lot of walking in those days.

“Every once in a while, we would go to a movie. We were just being happy together.”

“We didn’t have a lot of money,” John added. “I wouldn’t have known what to do with it anyhow.”

The couple still enjoys walks on the beach near their Key Peninsula home, where they have lived for 30 years.

“We decide what we’re going to do each day when we get up,” John said. “Sometimes we take our motor home and go camping.”

The couple attributes their longevity to respect for each other and each other’s individuality.

“You just let everything come naturally,” John said. “She gives me a little hell sometimes, but that’s all right. When you get married, you listen when they say ‘ ’Til death do you part.’ And you say it from your heart, not just because it sounds good.”

“We consider each other’s feelings,” Millie added. “But we each have our own individual hobbies. We’re very family-oriented, and our family means a lot to us.”

“You just remember to love each other,” John said. “It’s one day at a time.”