We Were 24 and 25. Thirty-Six Years Later, We’re Still Choosing Each Other

Bo and I have been married for 36 years.

When I look back, our story does not feel like one that began at a single, unforgettable moment. It unfolded gradually, long before either of us understood where it would lead.

We first met casually in high school. We knew each other, but our lives had not yet become intertwined. Later, we attended the same college, both studying premed. Then we found ourselves in the same medical school.

That is where we began dating.

By then, we had already crossed paths through several chapters of our lives. Perhaps that is why our relationship felt less like the arrival of someone entirely new and more like finally noticing the person who had been walking along a similar road.

The Beginning of Our Life Together

We were 24 and 25 when we married.

We were young, still becoming ourselves, and could not have known everything marriage would ask of us. Andrea was born the same year we were married, so there was very little time when it was only the two of us.

Marriage and parenthood began almost simultaneously for us.

Our early years were not simply about building a relationship. We were also learning how to care for a child, make decisions as a family, carry responsibilities, and adjust when life moved faster than we expected.

Over time, our family grew to include five children. The years filled with meals, school schedules, illnesses, celebrations, worries, work, and all the ordinary demands of raising a family.

There was always something that needed our attention.

In those years, marriage was rarely made of grand gestures. More often, it was found in helping each other through the next task, making room for one another’s exhaustion, and continuing to show up.

We Grew Up Together

When you marry young, you do not remain the same people who stood beside each other on your wedding day.

Bo and I have watched each other change through 36 years of life. We have known one another as students, young parents, professionals, parents of grown children, and now grandparents.

We did not simply grow older together. In many ways, we grew up together.

There have been seasons when one of us had more to give and seasons when the other carried more. There have been plans that worked, plans that changed, and circumstances neither of us could have anticipated when we first began.

Marriage has taught me that love is not proven only by how we feel during the happiest seasons. It is also revealed in how we care for each other when life is tiring, uncertain, repetitive, or difficult.

Love becomes visible through consistency.

It is in the person who remains beside you after the celebration ends and the ordinary work of living begins again.

Marriage Is Made in Ordinary Days

A wedding is a beautiful beginning, but marriage is built afterward.

It is built in kitchens and cars, in waiting rooms and grocery-store aisles, around crowded tables and during quiet evenings at home. It grows through decisions that may appear small from the outside but slowly shape a shared life.

After 36 years, I do not believe a strong marriage is one in which two people never disappoint or misunderstand each other. It is one in which they continue learning how to return—to the conversation, to forgiveness, to kindness, and to the life they promised to build together.

Some years ask more of a marriage than others.

Some bring joy easily. Others require patience, humility, faith, and the willingness to begin again. Through all of them, love becomes less about pursuing a perfect life and more about caring faithfully for the life you have been given.

What I See Now

When I look at Bo now, I do not see only the man I married at 24 and 25.

I see the high school acquaintance whose path kept crossing mine. I see the premed student at the same college, the medical student I began dating, the young husband who became a father with me, and the man who helped me raise five children.

I see the years between then and now.

I see the life we built through choices that were often ordinary and sometimes difficult, but ours.

Our family has changed. Our children have grown. We have welcomed grandchildren, and the house is quieter in ways it once was not. We are entering a chapter that the younger versions of us could not have imagined.

But we are entering it together.

Still Choosing Each Other

Thirty-six years of marriage has not taught me that love remains unchanged.

It has taught me that love deepens because it changes.

It becomes less concerned with appearances and more attentive to what is true. It learns how to make room for another person’s weaknesses as well as their strengths. It understands that companionship is not merely being present for the milestones. It is being there for the thousands of days between them.

Bo and I began as two young people following similar paths.

Then we chose to follow one path together.

Thirty-six years later, I understand that marriage is not sustained by one choice made long ago. It is sustained by choosing one another again and again—in every season, through every change, and in the quiet life we continue to share.