(calming music) (calming music) - Custom in the small town in Iowa, when you got married, you rode in the buggy around town.

There's the famous cake in the face picture.

(calming music) (calming music) This is my wife Nancy.

I'm Alan George.

We've been married for 67 years.

We've known each other for 75 years, I think.

(calming music) Oh gosh, our first date was when she was 14 and I was 15.

(calming music) Nancy was a year behind me in school and I thought she was the nicest girl in school and there was a physical attraction for a 15 old.

- I thought he was wonderful, I did.

- We double dated with a friend who was old enough to drive a car and so we sat in the back seat when we double dated and that's how we really got acquainted.

Went with each other in high school.

And then Nancy went off to Mount St.

Clair College.

She had a scholarship from the superintendent of schools of Clinton County.

We had just completely lost track of each other and went our own ways.

(calming music) One weekend we just happened to be in Grand Mound, Iowa, at the same time and ran into each other.

So we said, "Hey, let's go to dinner and find out what's been going on."

And at that point we were very different people.

We weren't in high school, very different.

I had a renewed greater respect for Nancy.

She was going to college.

She didn't have the funds that most of the girls had.

(calming music) I asked her to marry me when I was home for Christmas vacation from the University of Illinois.

And she kind of said, "I'll think about it."

(laughs) And so that went on for almost the whole vacation while we were home.

- We were ready to get married, yeah.

- We got married in the following July.

July 5th, '58.

Well, we had three, a daughter and two sons.

(calming music) - He was a very, very good dad.

Very good.

His kids would all tell you that.

- Well, we're both very proud of our kids.

They're very good human beings.

I hope maybe we had a little to do with that.

As Nancy said, we did a lot of traveling.

We bought pop-up trailer and then Caterpillar vacation.

We were on our way to somewhere.

- Well, we're thankful for them, always thankful for them.

(calming music) - Well we have 11 altogether, but we did some cheating to get to 11.

We had a set of triplets in that 11 and we also had two of granddaughters came from China.

(calming music) Well, we have four at present.

(calming music) - We were very lucky along the way.

(calming music) - The Lord's been very good to us.

- Yes, well I have a wonderful husband and he's been very good to me.

We've had a lot of wonderful times together.

- Yeah, we have always have a big family get together as a family and the whole family comes in for a big Christmas party.

We used to have it at our house, but we don't have the room for it anymore, so our kids have taken it over.

And when we are sitting there watching all this going on and including great-grandkids now you just kind of sit back and say, "Oh my gosh, how lucky are we?"

Look all these people, well you can even shed a few tears over when you realize how lucky you have been.

Just humbles you to see how did all this happen.

(calming music) I mean we're so lucky.

(calming music) (calming music continues)