Not too late for love: Area couple gets married after 70 years

Even after nearly a lifetime of absence, Marie Price and Dick Lightfoot discovered it’s never too late to fall in love.

The couple — Marie, 87, and Dick, 90 — tied the knot last week under the loving gazes of their family gathered at the old family cabin near Red River. It was the second marriage for both. They had waited 70 years.

“We had one of the nicest weddings that you have ever seen,” Dick said as the couple headed back to their home in Lewiston to prepare for a honeymoon trip to Alaska.

“We had fully intended just to have a real small wedding — just a few people. And that blew up to about 60, counting all the little kids.”

The guests built the couple a flower-studded archway under which they professed their marriage vows. Marie’s nephew officiated at the service and her only great-great-grandson, age 4, was the ring bearer.

“We danced — or stumbled around,” Dick said, laughing. “And food — you couldn’t believe the amount of food they had up there.”

Marie and Dick’s story began in 1952 when she was 16 and he was 19. Marie’s parents, Earl and Mary George, had purchased Red River Hot Springs and their family was spending the summer there, running the popular resort in southeastern Idaho County.

Dick’s parents owned a ranch a few miles away from the U.S. Forest Service’s Red River Ranger Station. Dick had graduated from high school at Middleton and was working as a packer for the Forest Service that summer.

“Dick worked for the Forest Service and would come up every evening almost and swim in the hot springs,” Marie said. “And we just got to be really good friends. All summer long, we swam in the pool and was very fond of each other.”

Dick also became best friends with Marie’s older brother, Ray, and at the end of the summer, the two boys joined the U.S. Navy.

They stayed together through boot camp but afterward Dick was sent to Guam and Ray was stationed on a ship. It was during the Korean War.

“In them days (the Navy) just didn’t want friends going together,” Dick said. “So they’d split you up and send one one way and one the other, if they could. And that’s what happened to us.”

Marie went back to Lewiston where she finished high school and a short time later she married Joe Price. The couple moved to Nevada where they began working on various cattle ranches and had four children.

Dick, meanwhile, was discharged from the Navy and started working at a shipyard near Portland. He, also, got married and the couple had two sons.

During these busy years of raising families and working, neither Marie nor Dick had any contact with each other. Dick had lost contact with Ray, Marie’s brother, who had married a schoolmate of Dick’s and moved to Alaska.

But the memories of that summer in 1952 never faded away.

“Oh, I thought of him a lot,” Marie said. “He was such a good friend and I thought, ‘Well, what would my life have been like if I’d stayed with him.’ Just things like that.”

In 1984, Marie’s husband, Joe, died of cancer. And four years ago, Dick’s wife died in her sleep. A couple of years later, Dick began to wonder about the girl he’d left behind at Red River.

“I knew that she lived somewhere in Lewiston,” he said. “I just decided I was going to try to find out where she lived and get reacquainted.”

Dick contacted a few people who knew Marie but none of them would give him her telephone number. Finally, he located a niece who directed Dick to her father, who finally relented and shared Marie’s phone number.

Dick called. When Marie answered the phone and heard his voice she thought: “Wow. It had been 69 years and I did not know where he was at. I had not heard one word since 1952.”

The couple met for dinner and a long visit, and before long, they knew they wanted to get married.

It took a couple of years to work through the technicalities of insurance, Social Security and other details. But the couple’s children were “tickled” for them and so, finally, they decided to go ahead with wedding plans.

Even though both Marie and Dick have more days behind them than in front of them, they agree that older people should not let that stand in their way of happiness.

“Oh, nobody wants to live their life alone,” Dick said. “I don’t think that’s any way for anybody to live.”

Marie: “But whether or not you want to get married is their choice. If they don’t want to go through all the rigmarole ...”

Dick: “It’s up to the individual. But for an older couple to have to live alone — that’s no way to live.”

Both say they are in relatively good health. “We’re doctoring, but we’re OK,” said Marie.

For their honeymoon, Marie and Dick plan to fly to Alaska to visit the children of Ray and his wife, Nancy, who had already died.

And as for their plans for the future:

“We’ll take it as it comes,” Marie said. “Live it up just as much as we can.”

“We’re going to do as much as we can and as much as we want for as long as we can,” agreed her husband. “And it’s like I tell Marie, ‘We don’t have time to waste.’”

Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.