Newlyweds Even After 65 Years

Sunday, February 12, 2012

BY MELANIE COUGHLIN

Special to The Pilot

Ray and Elizabeth Taylor speak and look at each other with uninhibited adoration. The love between them permeates their Southern Pines home in a way reminiscent of newlyweds. But these lovebirds are far from newlyweds.

The Taylors celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary last month.

Their longevity has been helped along by a passion ignited when Ray, home for summer break before his senior year in college, first laid eyes on Elizabeth at a bank.

"I walked into the bank, and here was this lovely thing behind the teller's window," Ray recalls. "I thought, 'Ohhhh, that's the most beautiful girl I ever saw."

During a brief conversation, Elizabeth was taken with how fun Ray was. She also found his exuberant optimism appealing, saying, "Ray's optimism has gotten us through a lot."

His cheery outlook was critical in the first few years of the couple's marriage when they faced one adversity after another, starting with the day before their wedding in January 1947.

The previous fall, the couple had agreed to marry as soon as Ray found a job. Just before Christmas, Ray was called to interview for a teaching job in St. Louis, 300 miles from the couple's hometown near Indianapolis. He got the job.

The superintendent told Ray to go home, get married and be in St. Louis ready to work in 10 days. The couple pulled together a wedding in less than a week, but the day before their nuptials, Ray received unwelcome news.

"I got a note (from the superintendent) that said, 'I'm sorry, but there's no job,'" Ray says. "Here we had the train tickets already bought."

Ray came up with a "plan B" quickly. During his job search, an editor in Jefferson City, Mo., had invited him to work for the newspaper there. Ray decided the couple would go to St. Louis as planned and then head on to Jefferson City.

When the couple arrived in Jefferson City, Ray received more bad news. The newspaper was on strike, and there was no job for him. By then, they had run out of money and were forced to head back to their hometown and live with Ray's family. The move was hard for both Ray and Elizabeth.

"I went to college, and suddenly, I'm just a kid living at home," Ray says.

Elizabeth felt the same.

"I thought we were going away to start a new life, and we're back home living with his family," she says. "It was a bad way to start a marriage."

Eventually, Ray found a teaching job in Illinois, and Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Jeff. It was a very happy time for the couple.

"We thought we had the world by the string. It looked so good by that point," Elizabeth says.

The joyous time ended when Elizabeth was -stricken by a serious -illness. She had to move back to Indiana for treatment, taking their infant son with her. Elizabeth and Ray lived apart for almost two years while she recuperated.

"It was about as low as it can get," Ray says of those times, "but if we can handle those early years, we can handle whatever the world hands us."

Indeed, the world has been good to the Taylors since. Ray landed a job with Firestone, and as he moved up the ranks, the couple enjoyed a rich life and frequent moves. At one point, they lived on Sydney Harbor, directly across from Australia's famed opera house. At another point, they lived in New England and learned to sail. Ray credits the frequent moves as one reason the couple has done well in the marriage.

"We have learned to transition," he says. "That's not easy for a lot of people when changes come."

The most recent change was a move to Pine Knoll, where the couple live in a spacious apartment in the facility's main building. Ray likes that a variety of activities are just a short elevator ride away, saying he feels like the storybook character Eloise who makes mischief in a hotel.

Despite many changes in the couple's life together, the passion that started in an Indiana bank has been unalterable.

"We still have passion for each other," Elizabeth says. "After 65 years, we still love each other."