FARMER CITY — When Don Olson drove Mary Brown home on the rainy night they met as teenagers 77 years ago, his car got stuck in mud on the long lane leading to her parents’ farm house in rural Weldon.

“We walked the rest of the way,” recalls Don.

“Mom was still up,” said Mary, continuing the opening chapter of a remarkable love story.

“She was baking bread — oh, it smelled so good,” continued Mary, still enjoying its aroma eight decades later.

New love was also in the air that night.

Don would leave his car in the mud, walking all the way back to his parents’ home in town.

But he and Mary, now both 93, have been stuck on each other ever since.

On July 31, the couple will mark their 75th wedding anniversary, recalling the hot summer day in 1934 when they were married in the former St. Michael’s Church in Weldon.

The church has long since closed. There are no photographs from the occasion. Weddings were a lot simpler then, said Mary, noting the couple had to arrange to pick up the pastor, Father Flynn, from nearby Wapella.

What the wedding lacked in frills modern brides and grooms have come to expect, it more than made up in effectiveness. The Olsons are among the longest married couples in the Diocese of Peoria.

The Olsons still reside in the tidy, white ranch Farmer City home to which they retired 30 years ago after a career in farming and the raising of their two sons, Gene and Lawrence. A house blessing done as a welcome by Msgr. C. B. Motsett, former pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Farmer City, was apparently as powerful as the marriage blessing administered by Father Flynn.

Editor’s note — Readers wishing to send a note of congratulations to the Olsons may write to them at 512 E. Water St., Farmer City, 61842.