Married for 80 years and still in love
There are rules governing the Valley View Village assisted living residence.
Some are federally mandated, others come from the staff, and then there are the unwritten laws of the retirement home. One of those tacit guidelines is no saving seats in the dining room, but resident Peg Newell, 99, breaks that rule all the time.
“I go down ahead of him, and I want to sit next to him, so I save a seat,” Peg Newell said of her spouse, Ken Newell. “He’s 101 and, if you ask me, when you get to be 101, you’ve earned the right to have a seat saved for you.”
Calming herself slightly she added: “When I say that, they let me save the seat.”
The Newells have been eating together, almost always right next to one another, for 80 years. Born and raised in Iowa, the couple marked their eight decades of marriage this month with lunches and parties thrown by family and friends. The remnants of all the festivities — flowers, balloons and a plastic storage tub bursting with cards — peppered their kitchen table on a recent snowy morning.
Sunday is Valentine's Day, a time for people the world over to contemplate the meaning of love. For Peg and Ken Newell, love is a mixture of deeply held affection and unwavering respect. To them, it's found not in large gestures, but in abiding fondness, decades of small kindnesses and time spent nurturing personal interests. And maybe even, in Peg's words, knowing when to "ignore him."
It’s nearly impossible to determine if the Newells are Iowa’s longest-married couple, sociologists and statisticians said, but their relationship is emblematic of a recent trend: Today, more couples are staying together for the long haul, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“About 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990s reached their 15th anniversary … up from about 65 percent of those that began in the 1970s and 1980s,” The New York Times reported. “Those who married in the 2000s are so far divorcing at even lower rates. If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce.”
In 2014, Iowa recorded the fewest divorces since 1960, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. And while the number of marriages dropped slightly from the previous year, 2014 still registered the second-most marriages in the past decade.
But the Newells are exceptional for the sheer number of years they’ve been together: “Few if any marriage lasted that long in the 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Theresa Liewer, president of the Iowa Genealogical Society.
Despite Iowa’s recent uptick in nuptials, fewer people nationwide are tying the knot and, if they do, they are waiting longer to walk down the aisle, according to The Washington Post. Changing attitudes about couples living together and single-parent families have also decreased the pressure to wed.
But, in some ways, the Newells are living proof that the “popular perception that marriage as an institution is in crisis is false,” said Jennifer Haylett, a lecturer at the University of Iowa.
“Look no further than this couple to see that marriage is alive and well today,” she said.
In the Newells’ apartment, the cedar chest Ken bought Peg in 1935 is displayed prominently in the living room, and photos of the couple and their family are scattered on cabinets like graffiti tags. The tangible memories of their life together are strewn from wall to wall.
And the stories and emotions that can’t be held come alive as soon as Ken starts reminiscing about his lifelong co-pilot.
“There’s a little song that says, ‘Most of all, I love you because you’re you,'” he said, looking at his wife. “That’s why I love her.”
***
After more than 80 years, Peg can still remember what she first noticed about Ken.
“His good looks,” she said without missing a beat.
“Well, that was when I had hair,” he replied.
“Oh, yes,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis. “He had a beautiful head of curly hair.”
The Newells have a hard time recalling the exact circumstances of how they started going steady because, to them, it seems like they’ve always been together. They hung out in groups in high school, and sometime before their wedding date in 1936, Ken coupled off with his “favorite gal.”
They got married in Carthage, Illinois, crossing the border for the ceremony because they couldn’t stand Iowa’s waiting period. It was a small wedding, Peg said, just two witnesses.
“We had some money: She had a dollar, and I had a dollar,” Ken said with a laugh. “Everything we have now, we earned over years of hard work.”
***
The Newells bounce off each other like Lucy and Desi. They don’t so much finish each other’s sentences as add just one more detail, one more fact to the end of the other’s story. They make each other laugh, and they can’t help but smile when they reminisce.
“Time seems to stand still for them both physically and spiritually,” said Bradley Cole, Valley View’s executive director. “They both have a wonderful sense of humor, and everybody in the assisted living home finds them a delight to be around.”
One of the keys to their long-lasting relationship is never bickering, Peg said, and always presenting a united front to their five children. (As of this year, Ken and Peg have five children, 10 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.)
“We don’t argue or fuss or fight, and we never did,” Peg said. “Our kids will argue back and forth, and they don’t mean anything by it; we never did that.”
“And we never had secrets,” Ken added.
The pair wasn’t overt with their affection, said their daughter Nancy Penn, but they were kind to each other and, looking back, she can pick out specific times one of them did something nice for the other one just for the heck of it.
“We really didn’t learn conflict management because it was kind of the norm to have everyone just working together,” Penn said.
There’s always been a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps simplicity to the Newells' marriage, Peg said, most likely born from their childhoods on farms. (Peg's family was able to keep its farm afloat; Ken's father lost his farm in 1929.) They learned from their parents that you get through arguments and strife because you have no other choice, she said.
“When my folks were trying to hang onto their farm (during the Great Depression), things were tough,” Peg said. “We sold homemade pickles, and my mother sold butter and eggs and stuff like that. Times were tough, and you buckled down and got through it, and we took that into the rest of our lives.”
She paused: “And sometimes I just ignore him.”
***
When Peg and Ken got hitched in Illinois, they were 19 and 21 respectively. Today, the average age of first marriage is 29 for men and 27 for women, the highest the average marriage age has ever been, said Susan Stewart, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University.
So even though some couples might be staying together longer, starting married life later makes reaching 80 years together a bit harder, Haylett said.
“Marriage makes up a smaller portion of people’s life today, so spending more than half of your life married to one person is just not at all common anymore,” she said.
Couples are taking longer to get married today because they’re finishing school, establishing careers and looking for just the right partner, Stewart said.
“Before, the norm was you got married, and then you built a life,” Stewart said. “Now, you build a life by yourself and accomplish things for yourself first, so you feel like you already have a life built, and then and only then do you commit to someone.”
Even though the Newells weren’t separately established when they got married, the couple has made a point to nourish personal interests and activities in their 80 years together. At their 71th anniversary, Ken was asked what the secret to a long-lasting marriage was, and he responded promptly: “Spend as much time apart as you can,” Penn, his daughter, remembered.
In addition to working at Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. for 30 years, Ken has belonged to the Masonic Lodge for more than 50 years and enjoyed various church groups. Peg, a stay-at-home mom, taught chair caning and seat weaving, and was a longtime member of Des Moines’ Philanthropic Educational Organization or P.E.O.
“One of the things I learned from my parents was to be my own person,” Penn said. “It was so important to them to be individuals and lead their own lives and follow their own interests. I think that individuality only brought them closer and made their relationship stronger.”
***
In their apartment, the Newells tool around on canes and still find time to exercise their bodies and minds. Peg likes to memorize names and poems, and the couple plays gin rummy — always adding to their running point total — whenever they get bored.
Ken was quick to say he takes only a couple of pills a day, and Peg was just as quick to reply that she doesn’t take any.
“We never eat the full order of meals,” Peg said of their healthy ways. “We eat just a half-order, and we have always eaten healthy, fresh stuff from our garden, and we canned for the winter.”
For Cole, who’s been in the retirement industry for decades, the Newells' vigor comes down to a life well-lived.
“The love that couples like the Newells have is the strength that helps them survive as they get older,” he said. “Granted, we can’t control death, but we do find that when couples like the Newells part from each other, what keeps them going is the promise that once they pass, they will be with their loved one again.”
The Newells are happy to celebrate their love and are appreciative of everyone’s well-wishes, but the fuss over their anniversary is getting to be a little too much, Peg said. The Newells' son, Donald, doesn’t remember his parents ever making much of their anniversaries and recalls only one time a few years ago when they asked to go somewhere to celebrate: Red Lobster.
You see, to the Newells, love isn’t the balloons or the flowers or the plastic storage tub bursting with cards adorning their kitchen table. It’s the simple stuff: the fact that they do laundry together, that she sets out his pill and that she saves him a seat at meals.
And it’s those three simple words, Peg said.
“We tell one another ‘I love you’ every night before we go to sleep,” she said. “Because I do. I still love him with all of my heart.”
Facts about marriage and divorce in Iowa in 2014
Age of oldest man to wed: 94
Oldest woman: 92
Youngest man: 16
Youngest woman: 16
Day most marriages occurred: Sept. 20 (558 marriages)
Month most marriages occurred: June (2,961 marriages)
Day fewest marriages occurred: Dec. 7 & Oct. 21 (4 marriages)
Month fewest marriages occurred: January (819 marriages)
Age of oldest male divorcee: 92
Oldest female divorcee: 98
Youngest male divorcee: 19
Youngest female divorcee: 18
Longest marriage to end in divorce: 64 years
Shortest marriage to end in divorce: 87 days
— 2014 Vital Statistics of Iowa
Hear more stories about love: Des Moines Storytellers Project: Love & Heartbreak
6 p.m., Tuesday Feb. 16, the Des Moines Playhouse, 831 42nd St.
Tickets are $10 and are available at DesMoinesRegister.com/storytellers. Tickets will be available at the door for $15, subject to availability.
A cash bar and snacks, including chocolates from Chocolate Storybook and mixed nuts, will be available for purchase.
Want to know more about the Des Moines Storytelling Project? Email ccrowder@dmreg.com.
To learn more about supporting partnerships, contact Anne Lawrie at alawrie@registermedia.com.