Love at first sight ... and at 50 years

As Walt waited for his mother to finish her workday at Sears, Roebuck, and Co., a striking woman in a short skirt walked across the parking lot, got into a candy apple red Mustang, and zoomed down the Boulevard. Walt was smitten.

“Do you know any real tall blondes?” he asked his mother, a record clerk, on the drive back to their Roxborough home.

“Her name is Marian,” she told him. “She works in my department.”

Giddy with his good luck, Walt decided to pick his mom up from work again the following day. This time, he went inside, where several desks behind his mom sat Marian Whitbeck.

“I was too shy to speak to her,” Walt remembers of that October 1972 day. “I asked my mom to get her number for me.”

The request did not surprise Marian. The day before in the parking lot, she had noticed Walt and the friend who was with him noticing her. “They were grinning from ear to ear,” she said. “I was trying to figure out how to get into the car with them watching me and my short skirt. I got the door open just enough for me to get through and slid down the bucket seat.”

Marian decided to give the guy a chance. Walt called that night and that weekend, he took her to see the Eagles play the Rams. “The next week, we went to New York City and walked around there. And we just kept going out after that,” Marian said.

“For me, it was love at first sight,” said Walt.

It took Marian a little longer. “I knew after the second date,” she said. “It was his kindness. And even just food shopping, we had a good time.”

They had a lot of common ground to build on, said Walt. “We are both only children, we have the same personality, and we have the same views on everything.”

Others also noticed how alike they were. Walt’s mother, Janice, often told the pair they were just like brother and sister — something they found hilarious.

“Well, brother ...” Marian jokingly began as they were entering a restaurant for dinner.

Walt interrupted. “Instead of brother, how about being my wife?”

Marian said yes to his spontaneous proposal, not quite two months after their first date. On Christmas Day, she unwrapped an engagement ring.

Walt and Marian married on June 30, 1973, in a candlelight ceremony at United Methodist Church in Roxborough, which Walt attended growing up. The music, provided by an organist and vocalist, included the couple’s song, “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters.

“The church was packed. It was hot and sticky. And it was wonderful,” said Marian, who grew up in Somerton.

A reception for 125 followed at the Collegeville Inn, where a band played music of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The couple honeymooned in Williamsburg, Va.

Marian, who is now 72, and Walt, now 77, moved into their first apartment — the second floor of a private home in Rockledge. Walt had been doing carpentry with his father, but a month after the wedding, he began training for the New Jersey State Police. He was away from home five days a week for eight weeks. Marian had her work, and on the weekends, “We had to make up for lost time,” she said.

Marian left the workforce when daughter Brooke was born in the summer of 1974. Walt worked mostly the 3-to-11 p.m. shift, which suited him. “We’d all be together for a good part of the day,” he said. The noon meal was the one they could all eat together, so Marian went all out, making chicken, meatloaf, or a casserole. The leftovers went into Walt’s lunchbox.

When Brooke was 3, the couple purchased the land they still call home — 2.5 acres in Pleasant Valley, Bucks County. They hired a home builder, but Marian took on every project she could to save money — she did all the interior painting and raked all the stones out of the dirt that became the lawn, pool, and gardens.

A year and a half later, their second daughter, Whitney, was born.

The family traveled together to California and Hawaii, but most often, summer vacations took them somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, and usually included an educational element.

“We went up to the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and down to Washington, D.C., to the Smithsonian Institute,” said Marian. “We toured the White House when Reagan was president and we got to see him, which was wonderful.”

When the Deardens were home, their house was often kid central. “We’re so rural here, and all the kids nearby were the same age growing up,” Walt said. In the summer, they swung on the swing set or swam in the pool. In the winter, they built ice forts and snowmen. Walt and Marian welcomed everyone.

Their kids are adults now. Brooke and her dog, Zoey, live at home. Whitney and her husband, William, live in Texas.

Walt retired after 21 years on the force, giving him and Marian more time to tend to their gardens. With the help of his rototiller, he grows a quarter acre of potatoes, onions, beets, squash, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. “I downsized a little bit,” he said. There’s still plenty to share with the neighbors. Marian grows flowers, including her prized cannas, whose tubers she has carefully stored each winter for 30 years, and generations of zinnias from the seeds she saves. “People will pull into our driveway and get out of their cars to take pictures of her flowers, which I see as a big compliment,” said Walt.

Marian’s mother, also named Marian, lived with the couple for four years so her daughter could care for her. For the past 14 years, Walt and Marian have spent winters in Boulder City, Nev., where they enjoy hiking through the red rock of Valley of Fire. In Boulder City, Marian enjoys a weekly breakfast with a group of like-minded Republican ladies. Often, they talk politics, but one day, the subject was Valentine’s Day. “I don’t need that,” Marian told the group. “Walt tells me every day that he loves me. What more can you want?”

All Walt and Marian truly want is more of the same life they’ve been living together. “We’ve been married 50 years,” said Walt. “I don’t know where the time went.”