MAKING IT LAST

A Young Love Built to Last

By MICHAEL WINERIP

Published: October 12, 2012 9 Comments

Booming’s “Making It Last” column profiles baby boomer couples who have been together 25 years or more. Send us your story and photos through our submission form.

Bronya and Neil Strosnider live in Zelienople, a small town north of Pittsburgh. They have been married 40 years. He is a partner in a trucking company that has 300 eighteen-wheelers and employs 450 workers; she is a homemaker. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows.

HOW DID YOU MEET?

Bronya: We met on a bus on the way to a swim meet in eighth grade. He tapped me on my shoulder and asked if he could borrow my comb. My girlfriend said, “That means he likes you.” I said, “No, we’re just friends.” She said, “No, he likes you.” By the end of ninth grade we were a couple and never split up.

Neil: She was a cheerleader and I was shy. I didn’t play sports. My family lived out in the country. I was baling hay, always working on farms. I had a job at a golf course, picking up golf balls, cutting grass, putting plants in.

She was my first girlfriend and I’ve never had one since then. I pretty much make up my mind about something and stick with it.

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU?

Neil: She was the best in the whole high school, the prettiest. All the guys liked her. Everyone wanted to be with her. I was always fighting off five or six guys.

Bronya: Neil looked like the Beaver in “Leave It to Beaver.” His father gave him haircuts and he had this little chopped up hair. At first, I didn’t think he was my type. A little nerdy. Even in his graduation picture, he had black-rimmed glasses and short hair — he looked like Buddy Holly.

WHAT DID YOUR PARENTS THINK OF BEING SO SERIOUS SO YOUNG?

Bronya: Neil’s mother never liked me. Our time dating was fraught with her fighting us and fighting Neil.

He couldn’t use the phone to call me — even though it was only eight miles away, it was a toll call. He used to walk a mile to a pay phone outside the drive-in and call me from there. Until he got a car, he rode his bicycle eight miles to my house.

Neil’s mother has Alzheimer’s now and since she got sick, she forgot that she didn’t like me all those years. I walk in the nursing home, she hugs me.

Neil: My mother and father weren’t with the program. They thought I should have more dates. But I didn’t see any reason to.

It wasn’t just Bronya, my mother didn’t like anybody. She had a very hard life. She was one of 10, and at 8 years old, she was taking care of babies. Then she had six kids of her own — I don’t know what she was thinking.

She thought of Bronya’s family as the rich people on the hill. Bronya’s dad was an eye doctor. It wasn’t that they had so much, but to my mother they seemed like a big deal, like they thought we were below them.

BRONYA’S FAMILY?

Neil: They were great to me.

Bronya: My mother loved Neil like a son. He was very persevering. He’d get on his bike and ride the eight miles to my house and my mom would make pizza for him.

Neil: There are a lot of hills in western Pennsylvania.

Bronya: My mother’s best friend died of cancer at 38. Neil sent Mom a handwritten sympathy card. She kept that card in a box. When she died at 83, we opened the box and she still had it. She couldn’t get over that a boy that age would write a letter like that.

DID GROWING UP IN THE ‘60S AFFECT YOU?

Bronya: He went to Grove City College. I went to Westminster. Our schools were 17 miles apart.

They were very conservative schools and it was the Vietnam years. It changed us — we were both politically liberal. My parents were Republicans and Neil’s parents were Republicans and we voted for McGovern. We would lead these very small campus protests with maybe nine people there.

Neil: The college was so conservative, everyone had to take R.O.T.C. I got a D. That’s what you get if you don’t wear your uniform.

HOW DID HE PROPOSE?

Bronya: We got married the Saturday after we graduated from college. There was no proposal, we knew we were getting married. He was my friend. He’s still the only person I want to be with. We were never engaged. There was no engagement ring. We bought our little wedding bands in a hometown jewelry store. It was about $50 for the two of them.

Neil: The wedding bands were the simplest we could find. The only time I’ve ever taken it off is to play golf.

THE WEDDING?

Bronya: It was during Hurricane Agnes. Half the people couldn’t get there. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed. Over a hundred people died. My parents had planned an outdoor wedding, but the ground was so saturated the tent fell down three times.

Afterwards my mother-in-law came back to church. She says, “Weddings that happen in the rain end in tears.” I found out later it’s not true. Weddings in the rain are good luck.

Neil: It would have been fun if we weren’t getting married. Roads were closed, rivers were rushing, trees were blown over. I would have loved to be driving around looking at everything.

THE HONEYMOON?

Bronya: Short.

Neil: We were supposed to go for five nights to Washington, D.C., but the roads were closed. So we drove to Cleveland. It was so depressing, we went home after one night.

WHAT WERE THE HARDEST TIMES?

Bronya: We had our fights. He had to travel a lot for work and I was home with two little babies in rental houses without great heat.

Neil: I was a salesman for an optical company, but I got tired of doctors, they could never be your friend. They were always better than you.

Then I took a job with a trucking company. There was a union. The company threatened to close if there was a strike, and they did. I was devastated.

Bronya: He left his job to start his own business. There were a few years of turmoil, the kids were little, it was very tough on us.

Neil: I started with four tractors and four trailers. I’ve been in business 25 years now and I still have the same partners. In that time, I’ve only had to fire one person.

ONE PERSON?

Neil: I have a partner who likes to fire people. I let him do it.

HER GOOD TRAITS?

Neil: She’s well read. There’s always lots to keep the conversation lively.

She’s such a good person; I don’t think she’s ever told a lie.

HIS GOOD TRAITS?

Bronya: I love that he treats everybody the same, the guy parking his car or someone he’s signing a million-dollar contract with.

He makes me laugh. He has this way of saying malapropisms — they just come out. If he’s hungry he’ll say he’s male-nourished.

TRICKS TO MAKING IT WORK?

Neil: To keep the marriage upright, every Saturday night we’ve gone out, just the two of us. Even if it was just an hour and a half when our girls were babies.

Bronya: We tried never to make it routine. Not chicken and mashed potatoes all the time.

WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT?

Bronya: I’m making quesadillas.