Couples enjoying 70 years of marriage share their stories

Opal Mae Kelley remembers her wedding like it was yesterday. She wore a borrowed white, tea-length dress, silver slippers and a long flowing tulle veil.

“I felt beautiful,” she said.

Opal Mae walked down the aisle to meet her groom, Maurice “Gene” Kelley, 73 years ago.

The couple met when Gene visited the Pentecostal church where Opal Mae was the choir director.

“He came with his aunt,” Opal Mae said. “It was a nice church.”

Gene quickly caught the eye of Opal Mae’s friend, Frances, who suggested they invite him out to eat after the service.

“She wanted to go with Gene and she wanted me to go with her cousin,” Opal Mae said.

But, when Frances asked Gene out that evening, he said he would go if Opal Mae went. Opal Mae said she coyly replied, “I guess I’ll go then.”

That night became their first date and the couple married just three months later on Oct. 13, 1936, in the Open Bible Church in Sedalia. She was 20 and he was just 19.

“I robbed the cradle,” she joked.

Opal Mae said Gene was nervous on their wedding day.

“He told me he was afraid I would back out,” she said.

They eventually bought a home on 16th Street where they raised three children. Opal Mae worked at Town and Country Shoes for 36 years. Gene was a firefighter.

“It wasn’t all honey and roses,” she said. “We had to work at it.”

Today the couple, both 92, share a room at the Sylvia G. Thompson Center where they play dominoes and sit side-by-side in comfortable, brown recliners. The cozy room holds two treasured curio cabinets filled with Opal Mae’s treasures and family pictures hang on every available wall.

Opal Mae describes her husband as “a good looking man” that still draws attention wherever he goes.

“The girls like him,” she said.

Sometimes the women like him too much. Opal Mae remembers when they first moved into the nursing home and a woman kept leaning against her husband and offering to cut his meat.

“I told her Gene had been feeding himself since he was married,” she said, “and he could continue to do it.”
On Saturday, Opal Mae sat alone in her room because Gene had been hospitalized. With tears in her eyes, Opal

Mae said she missed him terribly.

“Gene is a wonderful person,” she said. “I wouldn’t let anybody hurt him or be rude to him and he feels the same way.”

Wilbert and Mary Hazel Smith
Wilbert and Mary Hazel Smith, of Windsor, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in September. Mary Hazel said she and Wilbert were neighbors and attended the same church. After dating for a couple of years, the couple married in a small ceremony before a justice of the peace.

“It was 1937,” she said. “There wasn’t much money, so the wedding was no big thing.”

Mary Hazel was 20 years old when they married and Wilbert was 22.

Wilbert, a former U.S. Marine, worked as a superintendent at the International Shoe Factory where he retired in 1980. She stayed home to raise their three children.

Today the couple have eight grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and six great- great-grandchildren. Mary Hazel, 90, said they live a quiet life and Wilbert, 92, still drives them into town to run errands.

“He’s a good man,” Mary Hazel said. “He’s been good to me.”

 Holace and Hazel Gulick
Sedalia couple Holace and Hazel Gulick met in Kansas City more than 70 years ago when they both lived on Denver Street. Holace said he thought Hazel was beautiful the first time he saw her.

After dating for a little more than a year, the couple married in Liberty. She was 18 and he was 21.

The couple celebrated 69 years together Oct. 12.

Holace said his wife is a good mother who runs a tight household.

“She’s very neat,” he said. “Everything has to be just right.”

Holace, 90, said his marriage has lasted through the years because there was a lot of “give and take.”

“Our life has been wonderful and great,” he said. “I can’t do much complaining.”