TEMPE, Ariz. — A Tempe couple celebrated their diamond anniversary, 75 years of marriage, Sunday.
Fred and Jocelyn Handy first met in grammar school at a dance and the couple are still very much in love after 75 years of marriage.
“I have to thank God for our lengthy marriage,” said Fred sitting alongside his wife Jocelyn at the Contempo Tempe Mobile Home Park clubhouse. The two have lived there since 1978.
“All of the girls in my class were taller than me,” he said. “So she borrowed a little girl from another class and that’s why I say we were reluctantly introduced. Years later, that little girl would become my wife.”
After their chance meeting at the dance, a friend invited Fred to go to a church group where he saw Jocelyn again.
“I immediately fell in love with her,” he said. “It was quite a transformation from the girl in grammar school, from this beautiful girl in high school, so that’s why I say I thank God for it.”
After a few years of dating, they got married. From then on, they’ve never looked back.
Jocelyn says there are so many things about Fred that make her heart flutter.
“His loyalty and his devotion to his family and the love he’s always shown me,” she said.
And Fred? He's still smitten too.
“She’s as beautiful today as she was the day, 75 years ago,” he said. “She understands me and she’s supported me in everything.”
The way he feels, he says, is summed up in a Jerry Vale song.
The song goes: I love you more and more in every way, in happiness and sorrow/ I love you more today than yesterday, but less than tomorrow.
“I could not have laid out a more perfect wife for me than she has been and is," Fred said.
Today, Fred and Jocelyn have two daughters and a son, four grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.
“We just always got along well together. We have had a good life,” Jocelyn said. “We’ve worked hard, but we’ve appreciated each other.”
Their advice younger couples?
“We wake up in the morning and we kiss and we never go to sleep without kissing each other," Fred said. "Even in the rare days, which haven’t been many, where we might have had a little bit of a disagreement, because there’s no way you can kiss somebody that’s laying right beside you and not let the problems or whatever you think they have go away. Keep remembering why you fell in love.”
Fred is a World War II veteran. He has served as president of the social club and has been part of the homeowner’s association in his community for years. Jocelyn conducts exercise classes in the mornings.
Congrats to the lovebirds!
