72 years ago today, on July 26, 1948, my Mom and Dad got hitched in the Manti Temple. Here they are a year or so later, escaping to a beach while on a bee trip in California—with baby Betty Rae, their firstborn. Dad makes that diaper bag, or whatever it is strapped across his chest, look downright sexy in this slide. He passed away a few months shy of their 60th Anniversary.
My parents did marriage the wrong way right from the start. They got married too young—just a few weeks after graduating from Delta High School. Dad was barely 18 and Mom was still 17. They hadn’t really dated anybody else. They had kids way too young, and they had too many of them. And then they did an extraordinary thing: they paid attention to each other for decades. They constantly nurtured their relationship and managed to stay in love until forever.