Stories / Transcript

`OLD TOGETHER' AUDIO VALENTINES EXAMINED

February 14, 1993 from WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY

LIANE HANSEN, Host: Today, dear lovers, is Valentine's Day, and for the past few years Producer Barrett Golding has been collecting audio valentines from three couples: Ruth and Tom Cassoy, Lad and Lois Shorey [sp], and Mike and Kate McCabe. Barrett calls the result `Old Together.' 1ST MAN: She was the girl next door. Yeah, I used to watch her coming and going as she walked down the street. And she had the most beautiful wiggle I ever saw. And she still has that wiggle - yah?

2ND MAN: She once gave me a watch with the inscription ` 'Til the end of time,' and I used to send her notes before we were married and sign them `Dangerously yours.'

2ND WOMAN: We walked out and--my friend and I, and I saw Mike doing the dishes and I thought, `That's the man for me.'

3RD MAN: And that night, we slept under the stars out back and we talked until about five o'clock in the morning and the sun came up and it was time to go to work. That was one of the most amazing nights of my life.

3RD WOMAN: It was.

2ND WOMAN: Then he surprised me with the ring on Valentine's Day. People were romantic even then, you know. I'm from the time of the Duchess of Windsor. The Duke of Windsor was going to be the king of England and he met this American lady.

2ND MAN: He left the throne for her.

2ND WOMAN: The king of England left the throne for a woman.

2ND MAN: It was almost like Romeo and Juliet.

2ND WOMAN: But his own mother refused to speak to him and said, `Duty and country come first.' Yet he said, `No, I cannot do my duty without the woman I love beside me.' And that's a true story, not fiction or anything.

2ND MAN: So, there's romance.

1ST WOMAN: How do you explain that? Some of these things we thought of today we haven't thought of in years and years and years, I guess. Think back on this when you get older, think about this couple you met a long time ago.

2ND WOMAN: I think about that a lot, you know, getting old after, you know, the kids are grown up, we'll kind of go back to being just Mike and I again.

1ST MAN: Here we are, 47 years later.

1ST WOMAN: Just being good friends.

3RD MAN: Just being good friends and growing old together.

1ST MAN: Still together and still in love. I guess we'll stay together.

1ST WOMAN: I guess so. It looks that way to me, yah.

2ND WOMAN: We're at the end of the road, not the beginning. But we don't really talk about it much, and we should I know, but we just, I guess, think we're going to go down the road forever.

1ST MAN: She's the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, right? Right?

3RD WOMAN: Still say that?

3RD MAN: I still say it and still mean it.

2ND WOMAN: It's been a good life.

HANSEN: Barrett Golding's `Old Together': a little calorie-free treat for Valentine's Day. Music by Kels Cook with Joe Howard [sp].