My morning routine includes checking the obituaries over coffee. As the comedian Carl Reiner instructed, “Each morning, check the obits to see if you’re listed. If not, eat breakfast.”
On a recent morning, there was “Patricia Ann Stadick.” As I do with each name, my mind flipped it around, seeing if I could make a connection. A light bulb burst on. That was Pat of “Ralph and Pat!”
I say “Ralph and Pat” in the way I might refer to a comedy duo. In a way, that’s not too wrong. Funny lines bounced between Ralph and Pat Stadick, sometimes each teeing one up for the other. Both were witty and had eyes that twinkled when bantering back and forth. They played off each other in a George Burns-Gracie Allen style. (If you didn’t grow up with black and white television, you might have to google Burns and Allen.)
The Stadicks had a long time to hone their act, married 65 years when Ralph passed away in 2016. I got to know them early in my farming life. We were in some of the same farm and community groups. Besides being funny, Ralph and Pat were genuinely kind and caring. When they asked how my young family was doing, they really wanted to know.
I wouldn’t have known Ralph and Pat in the years before they were married. Of course, they were individuals with their own unique qualities. But most of the time I was with them, they were together. I knew them as a couple; I knew them as “Ralph and Pat.”
I was thinking about people I know mostly as part of a pair. As couples came to mind, I realized I often put the husband’s name first. I think of Mark and Elia and Scott and Judy. I asked Pam, and sure enough she usually thinks of them in reverse order, woman first. Perhaps my habit of husband first a remnant of the “Mr. and Mrs.” days?
When I think of friend-couples we’ve known for a long time, it becomes hard to imagine one without the other. Francis without Rebecca in a way doesn’t make sense. It’s like having one glove or one shoe. They share kids, they share a house, and decades of history. A lot binds them. Most of my conversations with one have been with both.
Of course, there are people who mostly know me, and there are people who mostly know Pam. For those, our spouse is a name they know in a secondary way, connected to the first. But a lot of friends know us as “Pam and Randy.”
A little of me gets folded into our identity as a couple. Pam’s strengths and weaknesses are stirred into mine, creating a type of batter that is more than the sum of the ingredients. I’m okay with that. Pam softens some of my rough edges, and I hope I round some of hers.
It’s not uncommon for one of a longtime couple to finish the other’s thought. Or at least clarify it. Sometimes if I know I’m going to have trouble retrieving a name, I’ll look at Pam as I move through a story. Since she’s heard that story a hundred times, she can pick it up where needed.
Making a marriage work, being part of a team, is something I’m proud of. “Pam and Randy” has been around for 41 years. But those are in in the past: we need to make our marriage work today and the next. It’s not unlike a long baseball season; yesterday’s box score doesn’t help you today. Ralph and Pat had 65 of these. For them, the season is over, and “the totals on the scoreboard are correct.”
I don’t want to be pollyannish about this. There are times I’m sure Pam wants to yell, “That’s him, not me!” The comedy duo of “Randy and Pam” lays an egg sometimes. We’ve had rough patches. No doubt, Ralph and Pat did, too, in decades of farm, family, and health challenges.
None of this should be taken for granted. Two-person teams break up. All of us know couples who’ve split. Looking back on friends who’ve gone through a divorce, in some of those cases, it made perfect sense. You could see it coming a mile away. For others, it snuck up like a slow arriving cold front. No one can ever really know what’s going on inside of another’s relationship. Sometimes it’s a surprise to those on the outside.
A few times, we’ve known both parties to a breakup equally well. In some of those, we’ve gotten to hear both sides of a bad story. That’s a painful situation to be in. It makes you think marriage counselors are underpaid. As the saying goes, there are two sides to every story and then the truth.
We’re at an age where couples “break up” for another reason. Time will take one of the partners and the other will go on alone. Some time, hopefully a long time, one of “Pam and Randy” will leave the stage and the remaining member of the duo will be left to perform solo.
We are in a couples-prayer group that began meeting thirty-five years ago. Originally, we were part of an international Catholic organization called Teams of Our Lady. We gather for a meal, prayer, and a lesson based on a chosen reading. In that setting, I know the others almost exclusively as couples. We’ve been together for the raising up and moving out of kids and funerals of parents.
We’ve talked about what it will be like the first time one of us comes to a meeting as a single. It will happen, whatever we think of the idea. The husbands joke with Mike, who is the youngest of the husbands by a little, that he will have to help our wives when we are gone: moving furniture, carrying in softener salt, all that guy stuff.
Dewy and Karla, Mickey and Minnie, Tim and Lora, Homer and Marge, Wayne and Jackie, Fred and Wilma, Mike and Gigi, Popeye and Olive, Rick and Gwen: couples I’ve known.