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BROOKVILLE — Ray and Gladys Wertz have been married longer than most people in the world live.

"This life has slipped by rather rapidly," the 97-year-old Ray said of his marriage. "You're bound to learn a lot in 75 years. I don't know how I'd get along without her."

"We are more in love today than when we were young," said Gladys, 93.

Gladys and Ray married in June 1933 in the midst of the Depression. She was 18½, he was 21. They had met some three years earlier at a church camp in Ludlow Falls.

They moved to his hometown, Altoona, Pa., where he became a long-haul trucker.

"He'd be gone two, three days, sleeping in the truck and come back all worn out," Gladys remembered. "Nobody had any money. It was really, really bad."

Just as scarce as money was housing. An aunt and uncle of Gladys' found the couple a house in Potsdam, and they moved back to Ohio.

Ray landed a job with Borden's as a milkman, a job he kept for four decades, delivering to Oakwood and Kettering.

"I got to know some people real well. I delivered to Mr. Orville Wright for a short period, Col. Deeds, George Mead, a number of others," Ray said.

What brings a brightness to his eyes are not the famous, but the children. He recalled a doctor's family of five children who moved onto his route. The kids always greeted him in the morning. One morning, the youngest was sick and unable to come downstairs. He could hear her crying, "I won't get to see Ray."

"Her mother came out and asked as I drove away to stop in the street and wave to the baby in the upstairs window," he smiled in recollection.

Ray uses hearing aids, with batteries that often fail. Gladys answers for both of them when Ray can't quite hear the question.

And he is a bit of a tease. Ray recalls when he and Gladys were newly wed, she was making macaroni for dinner.

"I told her I once had a job in a macaroni factory, drilling the holes in the macaroni. She thought that was the most fascinating job," he chuckled.

"Well," Gladys responded, "I was just married and just starting out."

Seventy-five years later, each worries about what will happen to the other when death visits.

"Married life is never all together perfect, no matter what they say," Gladys said. "You are two different people. You have to learn to understand and respect each other.

"We've become one. I need him for so much, and he needs me."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2290 or

dpage@DaytonDailyNews.com.