Hildegard Trittler found something to occupy her by the road in front of her family's home in Oberkochen, Germany, every day at 5:30 p.m. in 1954.
That was the time Michael Honold passed each day on his way to the train station.
The first time I saw my future spouse:
He says: “I was taken aback.”
She says: “I was taken forward. I kind of knew it was special.”
On our wedding day:
He says: “Dancing is not my forte. I was probably hoping I would not have to do that in front of everyone.”
She says: “I feel like I could not stand on my feet anymore. I was very grateful when it was over. My feet were hurting like crazy. I had those shoes and they were so pointy and I had to stand there and greet everybody and dance and all that.”
My advice for a long happy marriage is:
She says: “You have to have respect for your spouse and you have to love them, of course, to stay together. And you have to know when to stop talking.”
He says: “You have to know when to mind your words.”
Michael lived in a small town about 5 miles away and took the train to and from Oberkochen for work.
"Of course he had to walk from the train station to the place of business and every day he walked by my house and I thought he had nice eyes," Hildegard says. "I would be there every day, by the road when he walked by, but never a word was spoken. We just looked at each other."
This had been their daily ritual for several weeks by the time Hildegard went with her mother to a local music festival in Oberkochen. Michael was there with his friend.
"He talked to me," she says. "I was kind of surprised because I think he wasn't quite, quite sober at that point because there was a lot of beer flowing."
Michael says he may have been too shy to speak before then but that he had wanted to.
"She was a pretty-looking young lady and I had tried to catch a sight of her when I went to work," he says.
Hildegard remembers the butterflies she felt when she saw him walking away from his friend and making his way to her.
"It was wonderful," she says. "He's not a talkative person so he probably didn't say a whole lot. The music festival was so nice. It made my heart race because I talked to him and I knew it was special. Definitely."
Michael asked her to come home with him that day to meet his parents.
"It was very impressive that he introduced me to his parents and we had coffee at their house and then it was something," says Hildegard, "because in Germany at that time we didn't have boyfriends. Once you were introduced to parents it was almost kind of official."
Michael's parents weren't expecting to see Hildegard. He had been seeing a girl who lived out of town until just before that.
"It was a surprise to them," he says.
They welcomed Hildegard, though, and her family embraced him as well.
After that first date, Hildegard and Michael chatted every day as he left work.
"I had to take him to my mother and introduce him to my mother," she says. "He kind of didn't let go after that. He was at my house every day for at least a few minutes. In Germany you walked a lot at that time. It was an area just like here and you would go hiking and so forth, but every Saturday afternoon we would go to the movies. We saw all of the American movies -- I was already crazy about America then."
They were engaged about a year after they met. Michael didn't get down on his knee in a formal proposal, but they knew they were meant for each other and they came to an understanding that they would marry soon.
"And then we had to wait until we got an apartment," Hildegard says.
Later, he bought a motorcycle and they rode together. Hildegard's mother allowed them to travel during their four-year engagement, including to Italy.
Michael's parents added a suite with a kitchenette on the third floor of their home -- the first floor housed his father's dental practice and the second was their residence -- so they would have a place to live and could finally marry.
They exchanged their vows on May 3, 1958, in Oberkochen.
They lived with his parents for about a year and a half before they found an apartment of their own. About three years after they moved in there, Michael got a job in another city, Aalen, about 100 miles away. And two years after that they immigrated to the United States.
"That was a big decision because the grandparents were not thrilled that we left for America so we promised 10 years and then we would be back," says Hildegard, who had wanted to immigrate since she was 10 and read books by Mark Twain. "That was 53 years ago."
The Honolds owned a business in Chicago manufacturing transformers. Hildegard returned to Germany every October to visit her mother, but Michael had a harder time getting away from work; he went back every five years or so.
They retired 20 years ago and looked around the country for a place to retire before settling in Hot Springs.
Michael and Hildegard have two children -- Frank Honold, who owns Henri Studios, and Bettina Honold-Middleton, who manages a mortgage company, both of Libertyville, Ill. They also have two grandchildren.
Michael is happy to have celebrated 60 years of marriage to the person he first looked forward to seeing on his way to and from work.
"The whole girl was pretty," he says. "And she still is."
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High Profile on 08/19/2018