Marie Ryan had an established stage presence when David Welch arrived on the scene in Greeley, Colo., in the early '60s. He jumped right into a backstage support position.
All these years later, David will be her leading man as he makes his stage debut Tuesday. He's a member of the Kiwanis Club in Hot Springs Village, which is presenting the stage play Love Letters at the Coronado Community Center on Valentine's Day.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “She was in rehearsal for a play.”
She says: “It wasn’t the first time, but it was one of the first. I was with friends in a second-floor apartment. We hear this knock on the window and I turn around and it’s Dave, and he had shimmied up the outside of this brick wall, and as a joke was knocking on the window to get in that way, to get our attention.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “I popped the cork from the champagne bottle, and it hit the ceiling and then it hit my best man’s father in the groin. It was a memorable day.”
She says: “I’ve always been late or in a hurry to get somewhere. We lived diagonally across the street and two houses down from the church. We told my father what time the ceremony was going to be in the church and my father got me there a half an hour before. My parents both thought Dave was wonderful, and they wanted nothing to go wrong from the ceremony.”
My advice for a lasting marriage is:
He says: “If you’re going to have a very long marriage you need to be prepared to be married several times — by which I mean, you need to be ready to recommit yourself to one another through the years. And also, man oh man, it’s give and take.”
She says: “Sometimes you have to sit down and talk, and sometimes you have to just back off. It is totally a give and take over your whole lives.”
Marie was already enrolled at Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley when David arrived in January 1963, shortly after he was discharged from the U.S. Army.
His college roommate was a drama major.
"The first few days I was kind of at loose ends, and a play was starting and he said 'Listen, they always need people to work backstage at the theater.' So I went up there with him and just volunteered my services," says David, who grew up in Memphis.
The theater group was made up of college students who went to classes during the day and rehearsed or built sets in the evenings.
"When we were done working we would, as a group, often go out for coffee at the restaurant that was across the street from the theater ... and that's how he got to know the theater department and that's how we got to meet," Marie says. On Friday and Saturday nights someone from the group would host a party.
Marie and David gravitated toward each other, and then a catalyst arose to push the plot forward.
The technical director saw them hanging around together backstage and made them co-crew chiefs for what turned out to be a rather difficult play. "It was a period piece, perhaps Victorian," Marie says.
One night they walked from an evening of painting sets to David's apartment, where he invited her to watch election returns.
"We were walking past the Dairy Queen -- I'll always remember that -- and he pulled a diamond ring out of the pocket of his overalls. He was covered in paint. It was not in the box, it was just loose," Marie says. "He's kind of a jokester so I said to him, 'What gumball machine did you get that out of?' He would do something like that, I thought. He said, 'No, this is for real. Will you marry me?' I just shook my head, 'Uh huh, yeah, yes.'"
They were married Aug. 21, 1965.
Marie's grandmother, a Polish immigrant who had settled in New York, was happy for her granddaughter, but insisted she wouldn't make the cross-country flight for a "mint and peanuts wedding." She did attend -- and she prepared a sit-down roast beef dinner for the occasion.
David and Marie were wed just before their senior year in college. David got his master's degree in counseling psychology after they married, and both he and Marie taught in universities in Nebraska and Minnesota.
The couple have two sons -- David Welch of Charleston, S.C., and Dan Welch of Savannah, Ga. They also have three grandchildren. Marie retired from Chadron State College in Chadron, Neb. They were living in St. Paul when he retired from the University of St. Thomas in 2007.
They found Hot Springs Village after David typed "golf villages" into his search engine and it popped up as a result. David's longtime friend lived in Pine Bluff and they were going to see him, so they thought they might as well look around Hot Springs Village while they were in the area. They found it to be just what they were looking for -- a golf community for him and a theater one for her.
And although Marie retired from the stage when they moved to Arkansas in 2011, there was one play she wanted to do again -- Love Letters.
She played Melissa in A.R. Gurney's play 20 years ago. David supported her from his seat in the audience, as he did through many productions after college. Now he will play the part of Andy, who met Melissa as a second-grader and loved her throughout their lives, even as they married other people.
"It's a touching and really beautiful story of a relationship that evolves over time," David says. "Like all love stories it's funny and it's sad and it's poignant. We sort of warn people -- you better come with tissues."
David and Marie look forward to playing out Andy and Melissa's timeless love story on stage. Off-stage, they are playing out their own.
"I have found in these last several years that I do love him more every day," she says, noting "it's little things" that he does, like unloading the dishwasher, which she hates to do. And she makes his favorite foods.
"It really is about give and take," Marie says.
If you have an interesting how-we-met story or if you know someone who does, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:
High Profile on 02/12/2017