70 years together

POST FALLS — Michael Gray knows why Clyde and Shirley Williams made it to their 70th wedding anniversary on Wednesday.

“They were in love. They sowed it,” he said. “She don’t do nothing without putting him first and he’s the same way.”

Gray, a nephew, said Clyde and Shirley still hold hands, wherever they go.

“That to me is the biggest thing in the world,” he said.

As for Clyde and Shirley, they were firing off one-liners during their outside anniversary party at Guardian Angel Homes, an assisted living facility in Post Falls.

“A wonderful couple. It’s amazing they made 70,” said family friend Shelley Bruna.

Clyde and Shirley were married Aug. 4, 1951, in Hamilton, Ohio, and lived on a farm. Early on, Clyde was a cowboy who competed in rodeos and performed with a trick horse he trained to lay down and roll over.

He served four years in the Air Force before the couple moved to Spokane, where Shirley worked at the Davenport Hotel and Clyde at a sawmill. They bought property in Idaho and moved to the Whiskey Road landing in the late 1980s, finally retiring.

Their love, though, never quit.

How did they make a marriage last for seven decades?

“I really don’t know,” a smiling Shirley said. “It dawned on me more or less that we’ve been married that long.”

When asked to elaborate, Shirley laughed.

“I really don’t know,” she related. “It just happened.”

What do you love about Clyde after all these years?

“I don’t know,” Shirley said before adding, “so many things.”

Clyde, the strong, silent type, when asked how he was feeling about being married 70 years to Shirley, said, “I feel all right.”

So, what do you love about your wife?

“Who?” he joked, then added: “She’s all right, I guess.”

Which made Shirley chuckle — and hold his hand.