In 70-year marriage Breedens specialized in growing things: Apples, vegetables and families

For 50 years, Dick and Marge Breeden operated Wauconda Orchards, and their business method hints at their long, successful marriage.

Marge served as president of the business, handling the bookkeeping and financial transactions, while her husband was the creative guru, developing a relatively new concept for the time of having people come out from the city to pick their own apples and experience country life.

In 2001, they sold the 250 acres to developers and have retired to Arlington Heights. On Tuesday, they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.

"We just worked well together all these years," says Marge, 92. "It's been a good partnership."

Dick Breeden, also 92, likes to quip that they met on a playground, conjuring up images of them meeting as children.

"We've been playing together ever since," he says with a smile.

In reality, the couple met after college - she attended Milwaukee Teachers' College before transferring to Iowa State, while he went to Northwestern - when both found themselves working in Milwaukee.

They met during their respective lunch hours, when each had wandered toward a city playground. For Dick, it was an extension of his job in parks and recreation, which later would play a role in their return to the land.

The couple married July 13, 1940, just after the outbreak of World War II. Dick would see action from the North Atlantic to Iwo Jima, as well as helping train officers at Abbott Hall on Northwestern's campus.

Nancy, the first of five children, was born in 1941, and they began to think of ways to support a growing family.

After the war, the couple started their own business managing national trade associations, but the dream of working outdoors, honed during Dick's years in parks and recreation, never left him.

On a whim, in 1951, he purchased 75 acres in rural Wauconda for $100 an acre. At the time, the family lived in Glenview, and Marge still remembers the day he was on his way out the door, when he left her with a parting instruction.

"By the way," he said. "Be watching for a truck that will be arriving with a thousand apple trees."

Marge winced, as she envisioned them taking over her entire front yard. Happily, they came as seedlings in small, long boxes.

"I never could keep up with all his ideas," she says. "He always had so much energy."

Dick and his father had gone out to the farm every weekend to clear out all the brush from the land, by hand, before they could plant.

"I had the idea of developing a 'recreational farm,'" Dick says, "of inviting people to come out and see the lifestyle of a farm."

His wife chimes in that he planted corn the first year.

"But that was a pain," she says with a laugh.

The apple trees took, however, and over the years the orchards became an entertainment destination, drawing 150,000 visitors per year at its peak, and more than 1 million inner city schoolchildren.

The Breedens added a country store and restaurant, as well as a catalog business, before expanding the farm to include raspberries, pumpkins and strawberries. A hot-air balloon, shaped as a red apple and suspended 75 feet in the air, was their iconic symbol.

They both wistfully recall their closing weekend in 2001, held during their ever-popular Red Delicious weekend, when a two-mile backup of cars lined up to get in.

"It was a lot of work," Marge says, "but it was fun."

Apple orchards still remain in their family, however. Dick and Marge gathered with their large, extended family earlier this month for their anniversary celebration, at Center Grove Orchards in Cambridge, Iowa, run by their daughter and her family.

With their five children, 12 grandchildren and nine great grandchildren, and their spouses, they numbered 52 in all, which prompted them to look at each other in astonishment as they gathered for a family photo.

"What have we started," Marge and Dick quipped.