'Sometimes there's a card for no reason at all:' Still valentines after all these years
When Robin Alton met his wife-to-be Jeannie at a teen dance in Edmonton's Highlands neighbourhood he was "shaking in his boots."
It was 1949 and they were both in Grade 9.
"It was very difficult to muster enough courage to walk across the floor and ask a girl to dance," Robin said.
"She was the prettiest one over there so that's where I headed for, and there was another boy coming at the same time, but I beat him," he said.
"He came over and asked me to dance," Jeannie said. "There was a spark then and we just continued to dance."
"She's still beautiful and can still dance rings around me," Robin said.
The couple, who met 70 years ago, will celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary next year.
Jeannie, 83, and Robin, 84, and are now retired, but still live in Edmonton. They still dance to Blueberry Hill, the 1956 song by Fats Domino, though they don't go out to dance anymore these days, Jeannie said.
They have more than 40 descendants — with two more great grandchildren on the way.
Their advice after all these together?
Communication is key
"You've got to talk to one another whether it be good or bad," Jeannie said.
"People need to be kind to one another. Don't say things you can't take back ever, because that other person never forgets. Words are very, very powerful.
You hope that the spark will remain, but you have to keep working at it too. It doesn't just stay there."
Never go to bed mad
"Always make up before you go to bed," Robin said.
"[Otherwise] you wake up in the morning with a bad taste in your mouth, so it's much better to make up before before the day is through — and sometimes makeups are pretty nice."
Kiss
Jeannie said there was one more tip Robin picked up a few years back.
"It was either 17 seconds or a 20-second kiss first thing in the morning. You can't stay mad at or be mad at somebody when you've just done that."
Still each other's valentine
In a CBC interview on Monday for CBC's Radio Active, Jeannie and Robin fanned out cards they had exchanged over the years.
"You read them over and over again together and it just brings all the warmth back again," Jeannie said.
Jeannie picked out a card with an illustration of two blue wolves cuddling she bought "for no special reason."
Tears come to her eyes as she reads: "It was written in the stars and whispered on the wind. Destiny would guide our hearts to a love that knows the wind."
"That spoke to me," she said.
"I just love him and it says what I feel, that I can't necessarily write," she said. "So sometimes there's a card for no reason at all."
The couple say they will not be dining out on Valentine's Day.
The couple prefers instead to go out on another night this week to save money because, as Robin puts it, the day is "vey commercialized."
"We don't necessarily buy extravagant gifts and we don't go to fancy places often," Jeannie said. "But it means something to us I think."
