Together, from Day 2 to 27,394

The young man was the son of a rancher from southern Colorado, and one day, while driving through town, he spotted a girl walking down the street. She sang in church, and it was there they would strike up their first conversations. When he embarked upon a more formal courtship, he visited her home and sat on a chair at a distance deemed appropriate by her father. "One day, I saw her and I asked her if she'd be interested in marrying me, and she said, 'yes,' " the man, no longer young, recounts. "Wait," his daughter says, interrupting the story. "Just like that?" "No dating?" asks his other daughter. "My father was a very strict man," their mother says. "He never let me go anywhere. We never dated or did anything. I was even embarrassed when I married him." Their daughters erupt in laughter. When the then-young man declared he had found his future wife, his parents dressed in their best clothing and went to visit her father to present their son's case. It was the custom of the day to say that when a proposal had been rejected, the prospective groom had been given a pumpkin. Upon their parents' return, the young man's siblings searched for, but did not find, any member of the squash family. Shortly thereafter, the bride-to-be was brought to her future in-laws' house, where they had her sit in the middle of the living room for the family's inspection. They were married at St. Augustine church in Antonito. Ruben Salazar was 21. Emma Lucero was almost 19. On Thursday, they will have been married 75 years...read more