Couples share how they stayed happy together
With over 60 years of marriage under their belts, three St. Charles Parish couples decided to renew their vows.
In a time when divorce rates are climbing, these happy marriages persevered.
Theresa and Roger Guedry of New Sarpy celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary recently with a vow renewal ceremony at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans – the site of their original marriage.
The two met at a dance in St. Charles Parish in the 1940s and are proof that whirlwind romances can work out.
“We knew one another from dancing together at different dances…but one day we went to a party and I had a date.
(Roger) didn’t have a date, so he said ‘I can go take that little gal away from that guy,'” Mrs. Guedry said. “We started going steady after that in February, got engaged by Easter and were married in August.
“It was a quick romance and a quick wedding, and it lasted.”
The Guedry’s say that the key to a successful marriage is spending time together and being considerate.
“Do everything together and go everywhere together and don’t ever go to bed mad,” Mrs. Guedry said.
The couple has three children, 10 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Dorothy and Maunsell Foret of Luling have been married for 64 years and Mrs. Foret still remembers the first impression she had of her future husband.
“I was standing by the window and I was doing dishes. All of the sudden, here comes a man in the slickest suit of all yellow and I just laughed and laughed…and then we ended up married,” Mrs. Foret said.
The Forets were married in 1946 at the St. Mary Nativity Church in Raceland. They say that no matter how unlucky the wedding day, the marriage can still last.
“My parents had to sell a cow to pay for the wedding, then I had measles on my wedding day,” Mrs. Foret said. “Then, some wise kid drank all the drinks and refilled the bottles with water.”
The couple said that the secret to their successful marriage is simple communication.
The Forets have five children, eight grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
Inez and Harold Dimaggio met at a king cake party in 1941 on a blind date. Sixty-nine years later, they are still married.
While they were originally married by a judge, they were married a second time in St. Mary’s Assumption Church in New Orleans.
“The second time we got married we had to go to a church or my daddy would have killed us,” Mrs. Dimaggio said, laughing.
The couple has two children, seven grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.
The Dimaggio’s said that enjoying life is the key to living long and having a successful marriage.
Mrs. Dimaggio said she always had a job of her own once the children were out of the house and she even participated in the Mardi Gras Krewes of Juno and Shangri-La.
“(Harold) has always been a good man. He never fussed at me. I always worked and he worked,” Mrs. Dimaggio said. “We enjoyed our life and we had a good life. Plenty of people can’t say that.”
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