The pool on how long a marriage would last between me and Amy Seiber Davis was, at best, about 39 months, or sometime between three and four years.
Most bet on a year or less. Our marriage on Dec. 15, 1979, was the second for both of us. I spent eight years single after my divorce and often joked that a long-term relationship was a three-day weekend.
That, as they say, was then. This is now and on Saturday, Dec. 15th, we celebrate 39 years as man and wife. Yep, almost four decades since that evening when we stood together in the living room of Rev. Larry Jackman’s house in Alton, Illinois, and took the vows with his wife, son, daughter and pets as witnesses.
Afterwards, we treated the Jackmans to dinner in St. Louis and we spent the evening at the Sheraton Westport Plaza hotel.
Later, when our schedules allowed both of us some time, we flew up to Chicago, checked into the Hyatt Regency and dined at the Ninety-Fifth Restaurant on top of the John Hancock Building and left the next morning on the Panama Limited for a relaxing train ride to New Orléans where we brunched, lunched and dined through the French Quarter.
Amy and I began dating while appearing in a charity melodrama in Alton in the last 70s. She had been the resident heroine at the Goldenrod Showboat in St. Louis and director Birdine Groshong cast her as the professional actress to anchor the cast and I played the villain (“typecasting,” Groshong said).
Not long after the play ended, we were an item. On Dec. 15, 1979, we married.
Two years later, we left Alton with all of our belongings in a Hertz Rental Truck for a move to the National Capital Region around Washington, DC, which became home for the next 23 years.
Our 39 years of marriage has included memorable trips: New Year’s Eve in Piccadilly Circus in London, a romantic visit to Rome, an educational visit to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, another in Stockholm, multiple trips to Hawaii and other places in America and around the globe.
She worked with Al Pacino on a program to honor acting guru Lee Strasberg at The Lincoln Center in New York, got her butt pinched by a drunken Roger Maris at a gathering of baseball hall of fame greats in Washington, dined with former Treasury Secretary and Texas Governor John Connolly as he talked about the day John F. Kennedy died at an assassin’s hand in Dallas, joined famed photographer Annie Leibovitz at a private showing of her work.
Granted, our 39 years hasn’t been all fun and games. Amy helped set up the “intervention” that made me face my alcoholism in 1994 and I never consumed another drop of booze. We faced the horrors on 9/11 and the loss of our parents in their later years.
She stayed at my bedside after the horrible motorcycle crash that left me in a coma, near death, in 2012 and the long rehabilitation that continues to this day.
What keeps us together all these years?
“You make me laugh,” she says. “And you’ve got a cute butt.”
We’re good friends, attentive partners and passionate lovers. We love good times and each other.
And we disproved those in the pool who guessed our marriage wouldn’t last.
Happy Anniversary my love. You are my love, my life and my reason for being.
It’s been a great 39 years. Lets try for a few more.
1 thought on “Thirty-nine years and counting. Happy Anniversary to my love”
Your butt is as cute as ever. As for the laughter, thank goodness we both are able to laugh at the world and ourselves. I’m not ready to stop laughing yet, so you’re stuck with me. (Deal with it ) Love you always and ever – A (Also known as the idiot on the camel)
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