Life lessons and laughter from 80 years of marriage
COLUMBIA, TENN. — It’s a love story marked by humor, shared challenges and commitment.
There’s also a honky-tonk in the tale.
At an assisted-living home about 45 miles south of Nashville, more than 50 family members, friends and fellow Christians gathered around “Nannie” and “Gran” Huckaby — Ruby Irene, 97, and Joe Marshall Jr., 101 — as the couple celebrated 80 years of marriage.
“Nannie” and “Gran” Huckaby celebrate their 80th wedding anniversary in Columbia, Tenn.
Cupcakes with white icing stacked beneath a bride-and-groom cake topper adorned a table near the dining room where the couple and their guests sat. Photos on another table provided a visual stroll through Joe and Irene’s many years together.
The Huckabys worshiped with Columbia’s Graymere Church of Christ for more than 35 years, their attendance punctuated by brief periods at other congregations. Later, they tuned in to Graymere online before moving to the assisted-living facility, where Joe now goes down every Sunday to a service led by Columbia’s West 7th Street Church of Christ.
“I think when you both have the same faith … it makes a difference,” Irene said. Her husband underscored the importance of raising children in a Christian community, explaining that he and Irene made it a point to take their children to church.
Longtime Graymere minister John Vaughan remembered the Huckabys’ commitment to each other and the church. Vaughan preached at Graymere for 37 years, arriving in his late 20s when the congregation was only 11 years old. Vaughan met Joe and Irene in 1967.
“They were not showy,” Vaughan said. “They kind of led by their example. They just lived the Christian life.”
A sign outside an assisted-living facility in Columbia, Tenn., celebrates the Huckabys’ 80th anniversary.
Steven McAdams, Joe and Irene’s 13 year-old great-grandson, echoed Vaughan’s admiration. McAdams traveled to Columbia from Amarillo, Texas, to honor his great-grandparents on the eve of their 80th anniversary.
“It’s amazing. … It’s kind of rare,” McAdams said about their long marriage. He described their relationship as “very strong” but tempered with humor. “They bicker with each other a little bit, and they love to chat a lot.
“I feel lucky and blessed that I get to still see them to this day.”
Guys, gals and NuGrape
“No. 1, he was smart. And … good-looking,” Nannie said about Gran. “And what else? Dependable.”
That was eight decades back, and the attraction lasted.
Joe and Irene Huckaby in a photo from the mid-1940s, shortly after they married. The photo was one of several on display at the celebration of their 80 years of matrimony.
Irene recalled becoming a Christian at age 14 at a “baptizing hole” near Columbia. Joe was baptized at the city’s Highland Church of Christ, responding to a message by Joe Sanders, a well-known preacher and David Lipscomb College Bible professor.
It’s the first half of the 1940s. After spending the morning in worship, “Sunday evening you’d get out and ride around … that’s all there was to do in a small town,” Joe said.
He and his friends stopped at what he called a “honky-tonk,” an establishment into which girls rarely ventured. The guys would buy the girls outside a soft drink — a NuGrape, Irene specified — and take it to them.
Joe’s brother, Clifton, knew Irene’s sister Ann. One Sunday night, Joe and his friends stopped by Irene’s house, but she’d already left. When they saw her in a car outside the honky-tonk talking to Joe’s cousin, they asked her to join them. She declined, asking the cousin to take her home.
Irene had an agenda, hoping Joe would “get the message,” she said — the message that she “was interested,” explained Connie Bedwell, the youngest of the couple’s three children. Irene wanted to see Joe without the cousin or any other guys along for the ride.
Joe got the message, but before their relationship got off the ground, Irene left for Detroit with her brother for work. She wrote him a “Dear Joe” letter, Bedwell said.
The sojourn up north was short. The brother bought her a bus ticket back in less than a week. Before long, the future Nannie and Gran were engaged.
A cloud of tobacco-spitting witnesses
The journey to matrimony was bumpy — and about 60 miles long.
Raised on 100 acres, Joe had four brothers and four sisters, his family earning a living raising cattle, selling milk and growing tobacco. His mom depended heavily on him.
“You don’t know what you’re taking away from me,” Joe’s mother told Irene.
“Well, I guess your loss is my gain,” Irene fired back.
“She got off to a bad start,” Joe quipped.
Irene and Joe Huckaby got dressed “Up!” for a recent Halloween, portraying Ellie and Carl Fredricksen from the bittersweet Disney/Pixar animated film.
The couple decided to tie the knot on Saturday, Dec. 23, 1944, in Columbia. When the big day came, they kept their plans quiet.
“If she got him back, I wouldn’t get him again,” Irene said of her soon-to-be mother-in-law.
The plot threatened to unravel when they couldn’t get the blood test results for their marriage license. Plan B was to head south to a state that didn’t require blood tests. That meant a 60-mile drive south to Athens, Ala., or a 100-mile drive southwest to Iuka, Miss.
Joe borrowed his brother Clifton’s car, and the couple took off for Alabama.
They arrived in Athens mid-afternoon. Though no blood test was required, Joe had to get a quick physical.
The ceremony took place at the Limestone County courthouse, where several Athens citizens sat around a potbelly stove warming themselves and spitting tobacco.
“I kind of lied about her age,” Joe confessed. He said Irene was 18. She was 17 1/2, and he was 21.
The men around the stove happily served as witnesses. “Give ’em five dollars and they’d sign for anything,” Irene recalled.
The couple drove back to Columbia, stopped for groceries at the A&P and went home for the first night of their 80 years together.
Working well together … unless it’s wallpaper
World War II soon intervened. Joe was drafted but deemed unable to serve because of a kidney issue. He left farming and went to work at a local chemical plant. Irene gave birth to their children, Judith, Stan and Connie.
Judith Everett and Connie Bedwell join their parents Joe and Irene Huckaby, during the couples’ 80th-anniversary party at the Huckaby’s assisted-living facility in Columbia, Tenn.
Meticulous lists of real estate and automobile purchases kept by the couple document their growth as the nation recovered from the war and proceeded toward a new millennium. A 1930 Ford appears early on the list. Their first Cadillac arrives in 1987. They bought their final car, a Lexus, new in 2014.
Joe and Irene paid $3,500 for their first home in 1947, selling it two years later for a $2,000 profit. Their records show about 10 more real estate purchases through the decades, including a farm in 1968 and Florida condos in the 1980s.
“If I bought a lemon, I’ll make lemonade.”
After retiring in 1981, Joe sold his farm and moved to the city. But golf left him restless. To cope with retirement, he bought a house to restore. It turned out to be overpriced, and meeting the demands of tenants became a burden.
“If I bought a lemon, I’ll make lemonade,” Connie Bedwell remembered her dad saying.
“We drank a whole lot of lemonade,” Irene added.
“We drank a whole lot of lemonade.”
When Joe asked Irene what she wanted for their 50th anniversary, the answer was easy. Soon, there were no more tenants.
While Joe and Irene solved problems together, they knew their limits.
“There was one thing we couldn’t do together, and that was hang wallpaper,” Joe said. “Seemed like everything we … did, we went at it the hard way.”
Before moving to Panama City, Fla., after Joe retired, the couple bought mattresses for their new Florida home and strapped it to their pickup truck. On the way down, the blue tarp over the pickup bed flew off, scattering the load.
A nondescript notebook condenses into one page a lifetime of auto and truck ownership by the Huckabys, mirroring a similar list of the homes the couple bought together.
“Oh Lord, what are we going to do?” Irene asked Joe. “He looked at me and … he said, ‘The first thing I’m going to do is get off of this interstate.’ … He taped everything back together to keep it from blowing away.'”
They later learned it was cheaper — and much easier — to buy a new mattress in Florida.
‘What the Lord says about marriage … they put into practice’
Retirement gave the couple time to travel. In the late 1990s, a church friend who organized bus tours invited Joe and Irene. A 21-day trip took them to California. Later the couple made 11 cruises, their destinations including the Panama Canal, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
The Huckabys link their long life together with a shared faith. John Vaughan, their longtime preacher, agrees.
“What the Lord says about marriage, … they put into practice, and it made their lives very successful. I’d venture to say that separation … never entered their mind.”
“What the Lord says about marriage, … they put into practice, and it made their lives very successful,” Vaughan said, describing the couple as fun to be around and happy. “I’d venture to say that separation … never entered their mind. That was just not the kind of people they were.”
Asked to define love, Joe and Irene gave different answers.
Irene “Nannie” Huckaby asks her husband of 80 years, Joe “Gran” Huckaby, for a kiss, and he obliges.
“I think it’s respecting your spouse” rather than feeling “like you have the whole say-so,” Irene said. “You need to consult him.”
Joe’s response: “You’ve got to work together” and “have feelings for each other.”
Irene added, “When he tells you to jump, you say, ‘How high?’”
That made Joe laugh — and her family wince. “Nannie!” they exclaimed.
Wished a happy 80th anniversary, Irene responded, “I hope we have 80 more.”
TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact [email protected].
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