75 Years of Just Loving

Reynold and Mabel Retzlaff were married Sept. 10, 1939, in Cooperstown, North Dakota.

Rey, who will be 98 in May, and Mebs, who turns 98 this month, were both born and raised in North Dakota. After they married, they farmed for about 20 years, then ran a car dealership and later went into real estate. Not wanting “to grow old in that cold country,” the couple moved to California, where they developed a mobile home park that they lived in for 45 years before coming to Oregon.

The couple has two daughters and a son, eight grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren — including two sets of twins.

We caught up with the couple in their Newberg home to learn their secret to a long and happy partnership.

How did you meet?

Rey: We were raised on farms. We were 40 miles apart. That was quite a distance back then because you had gravel roads. A long ways from the city life. (laughs)

Mebs: There was a lake between us, where we went dancing.

Rey: We met at a summer dance. We did a lot of dancing at the lake to Big Band music.

Mebs: At the dance, my girlfriend and I were just standing there looking around, and she said, “Hey, look at that good-looking guy.” She pointed Rey out to me. I said, “Oh, he’s too sophisticated for me.” (laughs) He had a habit of standing so erect, and he was good-looking, of course.

We got together at the dances as often as we possibly could.

Rey: I thought she was a pretty girl! It’s just one of those things where you see somebody, and it just clicks.

Mebs: Not too long after that, here he was standing in front of me asking me for a dance.

Rey: “Sentimental Journey” was one of our favorites.

How long did you court?

Rey: A long time! Four years. We were Depression people. We were 18 when we met.

Mebs: We just kept seeing each other as often as we could. We just knew we wanted to get married.

Rey: Things were a lot different back then. Every penny counted. Of course, back then money went farther than it does now.

What do you remember most about your wedding day?

Mebs: It was very windy, wasn’t it?

Rey: Well, it was on a Sunday.

Mebs: My dress was blue with a pink velvet ribbon. We went on a honeymoon, of course. The West Coast. We went to see my sister.

Rey: That was the first time we were out of North Dakota.

Mebs: We went on a long honeymoon.

Rey: We were gone almost a month. Somehow or another we decided to go down to see the World’s Fair in San Francisco. We took a nephew and (Mebs’s) sister with us so we had some company and also to split the expenses. It worked out real well for us. We did spend some time with relatives, but the four of us only spent about $600 for 30 days. (The Fair was) enormous. We hadn’t seen anything like it before. We went up in some kind of a ball and then we could look over the whole thing. On our honeymoon, you got a roll of film and you could take eight pictures. Then you sent them in. A week or so later you’d get ’em back. No color. It’s quite surprising as well as some of them turned out. That’s the thing we’ve seen the biggest change in: communications, the world over. When we were growing up, if I wanted to call Mebs, it cost about 25 cents to talk to her. And you had all sorts of other people getting on the line. You all had the same line – a  party line.

Mebs: We’d call each other and we could hear the ding-ding-ding–receivers going down. One time we had an awful time hearing each other so I said, “Would you please hang up so we can hear?” So then you could hear click-click-click-click. They hung up.

What do you remember most about being newlyweds?

Rey: Well, we wound up living with my folks for about four years. So we had built-in babysitters.

Mebs: We’ve had an interesting life. We worked hard on the farm. He had several hired men, and I cooked for them all. I washed their clothes, too.

Was there ever a time you thought your marriage wouldn‘t last?

Rey: No.

Mebs: Never. We haven’t had any arguments.

Rey: Very few.

Mebs: Not very serious ones, anyway. We’ve had a wonderful life.

What have you enjoyed doing together?

Mebs: Dancing.

Rey: We did some traveling. We have a motorhome, and we have made several trips overseas.

Mebs: Not in the motorhome. (laughs) The motorhome is a great way of life. We sang in the choir all our lives. Rey has a wonderful voice. He was a soloist.

Rey: Well, I just sang in church.

Mebs: You sang more than in church!

Rey: Well, I sang at a few weddings. I had a good voice, but I had no training. Watching our kids grow, and the grandkids. Both of us come from big families. I was one of nine, and Mebs was one of seven. I’m the youngest. And (she’s) in the middle. She is Norwegian, and I’m German. Back in North Dakota, you had communities. There’d be a Norwegian community, and then maybe a German community.

Mebs: We celebrated our 75th wedding anniversary just last summer.

Rey: We had a lot of people come to that. They came from Texas and Missouri.

Mebs: Louisiana. California. North Dakota.

Rey: The kids made the arrangements. We had a wonderful, wonderful get-together.

Mebs: I brought out all my scrapbooks for the family to look at.

Would you say your marriage has been a happy one?

Rey: Yes.

Mebs: Definitely.

Rey: Your wife takes care of you. Getting old is not very easy.

What‘s your secret to a long and happy marriage?

Rey: We both have gone to church all of our lives, and I think living under an umbrella of Christianity is important. For whatever reason, we had very few arguments. We had discussions, but nothing ever got heated where we thought of calling somebody names or that type of thing. I’m sure it never even entered our minds, neither one of us.

Mebs: I think mainly staying away from arguing and just loving each other. I think it’s rubbed off on (the kids).

Rey: They all get together. We have family reunions. One was at Sun River. The last one was out at Stevenson (Washington).

Mebs: We have another reunion in August.

What advice would you give to newlyweds today?

Rey: Love one another.

Mebs: Mainly, stay away from arguing.

Rey: One big thing that I see is how sexuality is flaunted everywhere, which you never saw before. There was hardly ever a divorce. And it seems as though a lot of people act like they have a chip on their shoulder. Be real open with each other. Love the big points and don’t pay    much attention to the little ones.