Today (Aug. 29), Roy and Frieda Hepworth will celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary.
The two were married in the small town of Elma, Wash., south of Seattle, 60 years ago.
Frieda was a Sunday school kid and Roy was the son of a local dairy farmer and town preacher. According to Roy, she was 21 and he was 18 and three-quarters.
“That’s why he married me, to get away from the cows,” quipped Frieda on Wednesday inside Newton’s Carillon Music store, which the pair opened in 1970.
Roy recalls being drawn to Frieda’s solid “get things done” work ethic. She was fond of his sense of humour.
The two moved to Canada in 1958 when Roy took a job as a helicopter pilot.
“People keep telling Frieda what a wonderful person she is to put up with me,” Roy said laughing, “but I have to keep reminding her that she’s the lucky one.”
Frieda agrees.
“I am the lucky one. He tells me he loves me many times a day, he’s got a sense of humour, what else can you ask for?”
They have two children, five granddaughters and one grandson. And they still work at Carillon six days a week.
“They both deliver huge church organs themselves. And I am not talking light instruments,” said daughter Joan Clark.
The keys to a long marriage are “recognizing when things are good, the grass is not always greener somewhere else, and knowing when to say sorry when you’re wrong,” says Roy.
“The last one’s been the hardest for her to understand, because I’ve never been wrong.”