The secret to this Belleville couple’s 73-year marriage? Saying ‘I love you’ every day
Bob Byerley and a friend were cruising around Cahokia in the fall of 1949 when they saw two teenage girls sitting on the front steps of a house and stopped to say “Hello.”
Bob’s friend knew one of the girls, Marge Hoffman, from school. The four began going out on double dates, and Bob ended up paired with Marge’s friend.
There was only one problem.
“I wanted her,” Bob said Friday, smiling and pointing to Marge Byerley, now his wife.
The couple are celebrating their 73rd anniversary this weekend at their assisted-living apartment at the Benedictine Living Community at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville.
Bob, 94, and Marge, 91, insist that they’re just as much in love today as they were on their wedding day, Nov. 11, 1950. They have two rules: Never go to bed mad, and say “I love you” every morning and every night.
“They never really argue, not about anything serious,” said their granddaughter, Haley Degenhardt, 33, of St. Louis.
“The only time I’ve heard them argue was in the car. It was about directions or her telling him to slow down. She’d say, ‘Bob, turn here,’ and he’d say, ‘I know where I’m going.’ Then when she started doing the driving (15 years ago), he would tell her to slow down. I always found it pretty humorous.”
Marge gave up driving in January. She just felt it was time.
Bob and Marge have two grown daughters, Rose Cronin, of Belleville, and Michelle Byerley, who lives in Chicago, as well as two grandchildren (a third died), two great-grandchildren and one great due in February.
The couple dated about a year, mostly going to stock-car races, movies and family gatherings. Bob’s parents would clean up their new Packard and fill it with gas for them.
Bob, who grew up in Dupo, asked Marge to marry him in her parents’ living room. Of course, that was after he got her father’s permission.
“I had been wearing her class ring, and I said, ‘I better give you this ring back before I lose it. Let me put it on your finger,’” Bob recalled. “Then I said, ‘Look at it,’ and she looked at it, and it was an engagement ring.”
The couple wanted to get married before Bob was drafted into the U.S. Army, but he hadn’t yet converted to Catholicism, so they couldn’t do it at Marge’s church, Holy Family in Cahokia. The Rev. Joseph Mueller offered to perform the ceremony in the priest’s parlor.
Marge lived with Bob’s parents while he went through basic training, then she joined him at Camp Irwin, now Fort Irwin, near California’s Death Valley. He didn’t do well in the stifling desert heat and considers those two years of service the low point of their marriage.
The high point? “Getting our girls,” Bob and Marge agreed.
The couple adopted both of their daughters as infants, beginning with Rose. By that time, they were living in a home that Marge’s father had built for them in Columbia. Bob was working at a local quarry, where he blasted dynamite.
“The adoption agency said they couldn’t have me if he didn’t get a safer job,” said Rose, 62. “His uncle got him a job at Industrial Soap in St. Louis, but it was a big pay cut.”
Bob ended up working for the soap company more than 30 years, retiring as warehouse manager. Marge worked as a bank clerk before and after taking time off to raise the girls.
The Byerleys kept busy going to sports games and other school activities and took the girls camping and water skiing in their boat. Bob taught them to drive. Marge served as a Girl Scout leader.
“When we got married, we lived for each other,” Bob said. “After we got the girls, we lived for them.”
Bob hasn’t worn a wedding ring for more than 60 years. That’s because he lost his left ring finger at the quarry. His ring got caught on something when he was jumping off a train car. Clearly, it didn’t jinx the marriage.
The couple moved from their second home in Columbia to an independent apartment at the Benedictine Living Community in May 2022, feeling that they needed to downsize.
They switched to an assisted-living apartment two months ago after Marge fell a couple of times, once breaking her wrist. But they’re healthy for their ages and active in activities such as bingo.
Rose couldn’t resist asking her parents the standard question, “What is the secret to your longevity?”
Bob and Marge both shrugged before Bob summed it up. “We love each other,” he said.
This story was originally published November 11, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
