Valentines in 6th decade together renew vows in Bartlett ceremony

He gave her what every woman wants after dating together for three years: a watch.

A few months later, the watch stopped. So Richard Sonnichsen's girlfriend, Gail, a quiet young woman who grew up on a farm, told him, in so many words, to trade it in for an engagement ring.

"So who proposed to who?" says a smirking Richard Sonnichsen.

Richard and Gail got married March 24, 1956, in a little Connecticut church off Long Island Sound. It snowed. She was 18. He was 19. And gas was 13 cents a gallon.

"I love her dearly," Richard says.

Richard and Gail led a procession of husbands and wives to an intimate ceremony in Bartlett where they renewed their vows Friday. The Sonnichsens have been married almost 59 years, the longest of the couples retieing the knot.

Marriage "is not 50/50. It's 100/100. It takes all the work you have," Richard says.

It has in recent years, too, when Gail got dementia. She doesn't talk much and doesn't like large crowds. But on Friday, a bride again, Gail, in purple, sliced a white wedding cake and kissed her husband, in a matching purple tie.

They love music. Every night, after dinner, they play Giovanni, an Italian pianist and old Frank Sinatra pal, in their apartment for about an hour.

And when a singer crooned some wedding standards after the ceremony, Richard and Gail slow-danced. Beyond the vow renewal, they won't do much to celebrate Valentine's Day.

"We have each other," Richard Sonnichsen, 79, said. "That's enough."

Six other couples of all ages repeated their vows, first the husbands and then the wives, before the Rev. Patty Pipia at the Victory Centre of Bartlett, where the Sonnichsens live.

"You don't just jump out of it when things are going wrong, because we're supposed to be one another's anchors," Pipia told the gathering.

After the vows, Pipia hesitated.

"Does anybody want to kiss the bride? Kiss the groom?" Pipia said to a few giggles in the graying crowd.

All the romantics took up her offer. And one by one, each couple, some using walkers, sliced a piece of the cannoli wedding cake, topped with artificial roses.

"This is family to me," said Rose Simone, who planned the festive event with red and pink balloons and Cupids hanging on the wall.

Richard Sonnichsen, who used to work for a Wheaton Christian publisher and as a preacher, still leads services in a chapel at Victory Centre. About a week ago, Gail suddenly remembered his old job. Richard described a tender moment: She started stroking his face. And he started singing songs from when they were kids.

"She mouthed the words and sang the words," he said. "She couldn't remember what day it was, but she could remember the music of 50 years ago."

Richard Sonnichsen freely gives his advice on the secret to a happy marriage to the youngsters he meets on long walks. "That's when the preacher comes out of me, and I say, 'Because we put God in the center of it.'"

How did Richard and Gail meet? Her mom was his Sunday school teacher. They would raise two sons and a daughter together, even after that broken watch.

"I would do it again 100 times," he said.