When Joan Smith was 11 she met her brother’s best friend, Seward Ed Smith, and recalls “I didn’t like him, but he was always around.”
As for Seward Ed Smith’s take on Joan, “She was a smartass sister of my good friend.”
But sometime in high school the chemistry kicked in and they started dating, the Smiths said. When she turned 18 they were married and this will be their 65th Valentine’s Day as a married couple.
She is 84, he is 87 and today they live in Brookdale Senior Living in West Hartford.
The couple shared advice for making a marriage last: make time for each other, communicate, be able to forgive and have fun along the way.
“Both people are important and should be treated with respect,” Ed Smith said. “Respect each other’s intelligence.”
He was an engineer at IBM for 35 years and she was a registered nurse. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.
Joan Smith said they lived in several different states because of her husband’s work and they had fun through humor, friends and after retirement, lots of international travel.
“We cared about each other,” she said. “We’ve had a wonderful life together. Life has kept us busy.”
Ed Smith said if couples listen to the advice “just relax,” then “good things will happen.”
The couple’s daughters said their parents always loved and supported one another.
Get the love part right: It’s about knowing each other, sacrifice and sticking around on bad days
“They didn’t take each other too seriously but were serious about never undermining each other,” said Patricia Smith Karpe.
“And they kept a sense of humor and laughed even through hard times that life brought. They had date nights, enjoyed music, family celebrations and special gift giving,” Karpe said. “They put a lot of priority into family and always took such good care of my sister and I.”
Their other daughter, Karen Johnson, said their parents “truly love an respect each other” and “They would go to the ends of the earth for each other.”
Johnson said they have arguments like any couple, “but they never stay mad for long.”
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