Redding Couple Shares The Simple Secret Behind Their 70-Year Marriage

REDDING, CT — It's not one of our nation's proudest statistics.

The United States has the 6th highest divorce rate in the world, with 40-50 percent of married couples cutting the knot.

As you would expect for any popular trend, it's also become a big business. In Connecticut, the average cost of a divorce is about $15,500, but varies from a range of about $5,000 to $34,000.

So how, then, has Redding couple John and Lillian Lynch come to be celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary in May?

Laughter.

"If you don't laugh a lot, you kind of wither up, I think," John, 89, explained.

"Don't give up, and always laugh" Lillian, 88, said. "It's too easy to quit now."

There was no Facebook, Twitter or TikTok throughout most of the Lynch marriage, and John thinks that gave them a leg up on modern couples.

"I don't think this electronic medium helps us at all," he said. "We didn't grow up with it, and we've stayed away from it. We just weren't interested. We were interested in each other, interested in our hobbies and our kids."

The couple shared their first laugh together when John was a factory worker at La Pointe Electronics in Rockville, where Lillian had an after school office job. John was 19, and Lillian, 17. There was never any question they wouldn't end up together. The couple was married shortly after they met, and Lillian had their first child when she was 18.

The electronics business is long gone, but John and Lillian's marriage has remained intact, defying the odds.

Teen marriages are rare. The probability of first marriage by age 18 for women is 6 percent, and just 2 percent for men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Divorces for teen married couples are common, however. One-third of teenage marriages — where the bride is younger than 18 — end in divorce within five years, and almost half the couples end up divorcing within 10 years.

The couple believes that focusing on their family, and their hobbies, were key ingredients in the recipe of their long marriage.

Lillian was a stay at home mom when her daughters were young, and then went to school to become a certified nurse's assistant, working at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford. John punched out at United Technology at Bradley Airport for the last time in 1991.

"I took an early retirement and said, 'I've had enough.'"

Retirement gave John more time to spend on his hobby, restoring antique cars (He's up to 25 at last count). The couple also kept busy building and renovating the houses where they lived, which included a summer home on a lake in Maine.

John pointed out that people just don't do much in the way of restoring cars and building their own homes anymore. He linked those kinds of "substantive hobbies" to the longevity of his marriage.

"When I was working, I couldn't wait to get home, take off the shirt and tie, put on the old clothes, go out in the barn and restore an old car," he told Patch.

John designed the family's Maine getaway on the back of a paper bag, and then he and his wife cleared the property with their axes, before building it.

"It was a big house with a big barn in the backyard and a workshop upstairs, and antique cars downstairs, and we just had a hell of a time," he remembered fondly.

After his retirement, John said he "went back and consulted for a couple of years, but I just couldn't get into it. I was having too much fun away from the factory."

Eventually, the Lynches decided to take it down a notch.

"Our daughter was down here (in Redding), and she convinced us that we would be needing some more help before too much longer. So we came while we're still in good health" John said.

The couple now lives at Meadow Ridge, a retirement community in Redding. They'll be joined there in May by their three daughters, their grand children, and six great-grandchildren, all under the age of four. The whole clan will be convening to celebrate John and Lillian's 70th wedding anniversary.

That family-gathering anniversary celebration will not be the Lynch family's last, John promised:

"We're looking for another 10 years, so call us back at number 80," John said.

Lillian laughed.