For our 50th anniversary, I wanted to gather the story of our life — the temples, the moves, the miracles, the losses, the laughter, and the quiet ways we kept choosing each other through every season. This isn’t just a timeline; it’s the map of a marriage built across states, decades, and faith. It’s a love story shaped by resilience, devotion, and the kind of companionship that grows deeper with every storm weathered and every sunrise shared.

If you’d like to read the full story, it’s below — a celebration of fifty years of us.

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(A letter for my husband — August 21, 2026)

My love,

Fifty years. Half a century of us — of choosing each other, holding each other, building and rebuilding a life across states, temples, heartbreaks, miracles, and every kind of weather a marriage can walk through. When I look back, I don’t just see the years. I see you.

I see the young man I met at Signetics in Orem — the one every woman flirted with, the one who somehow became my friend in the middle of my own storms. I had Corey and Tracy, you had Alex and Ben, and both of us were trying to survive marriages that were already breaking. We didn’t plan a life together. We simply kept showing up for each other until life itself nudged us into the same direction.

And then came that Christmas of 1975 — the layoff, the eviction, the panic. You found me a place in Salt Lake City, found work nearby, and without knowing it, you set the first stone of our shared foundation. We didn’t fall in love in a moment. We built love out of survival, loyalty, and the way you refused to let me face anything alone.

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🌿 The Early Years — Loss, Courage, and Holding On

We moved on January 1, 1976, carrying more hope than belongings. Then came the devastation no parent should ever face — losing Tracy. Losing everything we owned. Losing the Cougar. And yet, even in that grief, we stayed side by side.

Mama’s house. The funeral. Corey kidnapped the night of the viewing. Our first apartment. Our first purchase together — that king‑sized waterbed, our first big purchase on time, and even now, with a mattress we still sleep on. Even then, we were learning how to be a team.

Southern California beaches gave us rest. Quiet days, lazy waves, long talks, always with music to soothe us. You missed your boys. I missed Corey and Tracy. We were two people grieving separately, but healing together.

Then came the loss of our baby boy at five months. Another heartbreak. Another moment where we could have fallen apart — but didn’t.

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💍 The Day We Chose Forever

My divorce finalized in August. We married on August 21, 1976, in Las Vegas at the tiny white “Chapel of Eternal Love.” We dressed in a gas station bathroom — me in a long white polyester dress with a white embroidered collar. We couldn’t afford a room, so we celebrated at Denny’s in the middle of the night. Then we drove home, closer to each other than two people have ever been.

That night wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t grand. But it was ours, and it was perfect. We made it OUR chapel of eternal love. From that day, I never felt otherwise, that our love is eternal.

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🏡 Becoming a Family

Corey came home after nine months missing. Alex and Ben came home a few days later. Oh, we were so very happy! We celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving together. Fantasia was our first movie as a family. You brought me flowers every day for years. We were complete — or as complete as life allowed.

Varian. Church every Sunday. Sarah’s birth. No bucket seats — always cheek to cheek.

Washington. Boeing. Rachael’s birth. Acreage, camping, canning, goats, pigs, rabbits, homeschooling. A whole world built from scratch. We were so much in love, so thankful for each other. Even 20 years later, we couldn’t wait to hold each other tight every night.

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✨ Sacred Places, Sacred Promises

Our sealing in the Hawaii Temple — ten days in paradise, one on Maui. Sushi for the first time. Pearl Harbor. BYU–Hawaii. The Polynesian Cultural Center. Driving all over Oahu with joy in our bones. Stargazing into the brilliantly clear night sky, thanking our Father for our many blessings.

Mt. Haleakalā — the highest volcanic mountain in the islands. The young doctor and his pregnant wife who joined us. My altitude sickness. Your shoulder injury. The doctor treating you on the beach the next day. Even in the strangest moments, we were blessed.

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🌱 The Middle Years — Work, Service, and Hard Lessons

School. Degrees. Fostering. Political life. Exhaustion. Parenting styles clashing. Kids running in opposite directions. Painful years. Both girls pregnant. The kind of heartbreak that ages a person.

Then, Penryn Park — caretakers. Isolation. Peace. Healing. Unity. The earth itself seemed to hold us together.

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🌾 The Later Years — Dreams, Realizations, and Grace

Hawkins, East Texas — the dream fulfilled, then sickness, like a dark shadow, creeping in, once again. The slow painful realization that some dreams arrive later than we hoped. But even then, we stayed side by side.

Now we plan the conclusion gently. We take things slower. We prepare for one last move — to be near family. To settle all things. To finish our story the same way we began it: together.

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💛 What I Celebrate Today

I celebrate your strength.
I celebrate your devotion.
I celebrate the way you have carried burdens no one else sees.
I celebrate the way you have loved me through sickness, exhaustion, and every season of life.
I celebrate the way you have shown up — again and again — even when life was unfair.

I celebrate us.

Fifty years of temples.
Fifty years of moves.
Fifty years of children, losses, miracles, and memories.
Fifty years of choosing each other.

My love, we have lived a life that could fill volumes. And through every chapter — the beautiful ones, the painful ones, the ones we barely survived — you have been my partner, my protector, my companion, my home.

Happy 50th Anniversary.

I love you more now than I did on the night we stood in that tiny white chapel.

And I will love you still in every chapter that remains.

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✨ Gentle Closing Blessing for the Anniversary Letter

May the years ahead be lighter than the ones behind us.
May peace settle into the corners of our days,
and may kindness be the language we speak to one another.

May we walk slowly, hand in hand,
grateful for the chapters we’ve lived
and tender with the ones still unfolding.

May God hold us close,
heal what has been heavy,
and bless the rest of our journey
with gentleness, warmth, and quiet joy.

And may love — the steady, enduring kind —
continue to be the thread that ties us together
in every step we take from here.

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