He had openly told me about his relationship with her. It would break my heart terribly every time he went to see her but I wanted him to do what was best for him and follow his heart. I told him to explore what he felt for Libby and let me know what his feelings told him. I needed to know if it was going to be me or not. I had always said that I would get married by the time I was 23 and I was 23 then. I was not going to wait anymore.
Looking back, I think this was a pretty crazy thing to do but I suggested that he take Libby home and introduce her to his parents. I said, “Try it out, see if it works!” One night his sister called me saying, “Cathy, what have you done?” I asked her why and she told me Earl had actually brought Libby home to meet the family. I crumbled to the floor. I was thinking that this was it, we were over. What I didn’t know was that every night after she went to bed he would ask his family what they thought and all they would say was, “Well, she’s not Cathy…”
One night as he was returning from a visit to Libby he got stuck in a snowstorm on the mountains of West Virginia. He said this song ‘Precious and few’ kept playing on his head the whole time and all he could think of was me and how little time we always got to spend together and how precious those moments were. He said deep down inside he always knew that he really loved me.
I had given him a month to think about the ultimatum. He took 3 weeks and proposed to me on April Fools Day. I knew he wasn’t kidding but after we called and told our parents I said, “You know, if this is all a joke I will kill you!” He assured me then that it was not a joke but every year on April fools he says he really was kidding and I always tell him the joke’s on him after 3 kids and 42 years of marriage.
It has been quite a journey. What he did back then was unthinkable: he handed all finances over to me. He told me that I had to pay the bills, save for our retirement as well as for college for the kids. This changed me completely.
