Just about everywhere you turn, you see a story about a celebrity wedding, marriage or divorce. But what about a marriage of two ordinary people? A marriage that has endured all of the things life can throw at you? This is the real-life story of a couple in West Virginia. This is a story of a marriage.
Charles and Mary Kay Milliken have been married for 22 years. Their love story began on a school bus when they were sophomores in high school. Charles asked Mary Kay who she was taking to the Sadie Hawkins dance. When she said nobody, he asked her to go with him, even though the girl is supposed to ask the boy. They have been together ever since, according to TribLIVE.com.
After high school, she enrolled at West Virginia University, which was less than 70 miles away. She told the newspaper she stayed in college only three weeks. She missed her parents and her hometown. She missed Charles.
Charles told TribLive, “I thought she might be gone forever, That’s why I never let her out of my sight again.”
Their engagement was not roses and candlelight at a romantic restaurant. Charles did not get down on bended knee and propose. According to TribLive, the proposal went this way:
‘”Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” she asked.
“Hopefully married,” he said.
“To who?” she said.
“Well … you.”
“Oh,” she said.
So it was settled. They were engaged.”
They tried to start a family but they each “had issues,” and three different fertility doctors said they could not have children, the story said. They grieved, but five years later their first miracle occurred when their daughter was born. Three years later, they had a son, their second miracle.
Because this is a story about a real-life marriage, happiness came with sadness and heartache. When Mary Kay was pregnant with her son, her doctors found a lump in her breast.
According to TribLive, the doctors removed the lump and most of one breast. Mary Kay decided to have implants. but they were faulty. She was sick for years, until doctors removed the implants.
Mary Kay also faced another challenge. When she was 29, she learned from her mother-in-law that she was adopted. Many people in her small town knew about her adoption, the newspaper said. But Mary Kay felt her whole life was a lie, even though she knew her parents loved her.
Her parents said that her birth mother had been raped, and she was “unprepared and unwilling to become a mother.” They had never told her, they said, “because they didn’t want her growing up with the ‘stigma’ of being adopted,” according to TribLive.
Life brought more turmoil. A year after Mary Kay learned she was adopted, her mother “fell, had a leg amputated and eventually died.” Her father died a few years later, and then her grandmother died. TribLive said Charles stood “by her at every turn. Until he couldn’t.”
Charles had a heart attack, and then he had another one. “Mary Kay became the rock,” according to the story. “He’s my everything,” she said. “When I have my weak moments, he pulls me up. I do the same for him.”
That’s when Charles figured out a way to show Mary Kay just how much he loved her. Discover his special way of showing his love for the only woman he has ever loved here.
