The eloped 3 days after my Granny’s 18th birthday. She was expelled from her private college because she was married, and thus a bad influence on the other (assumed virginal) girls. When she enrolled in the local public college, my Grandfather had to register for her classes because she was married. He signed her up for science and home economics classes, not the art classes she was interested in . . . so she dropped out after one semester.

During the early years of their marriage, they had a farm. Granny cooked meals for everyone who worked on the farm and their families, often 30-40 people daily. She also reared 5 children and often was expected to look after the children of the farm hands. She was never paid a penny (although it was her family money that purchased the farm in the first place) and the work she did was never considered “work.”

They have been married 70 years. She didn’t receive a wedding band until their 40th anniversary. All of their children have college degrees, several have multiple advanced degrees.

Their daughter, my grandmother, fell in love with her father’s first cousin. Despite vigorous objections from her parents, she married him at the dock in N.J. when her ship from Germany, where she had been studying, landed. They had given up any hope of a sanctioned marriage.

Their daughter, my mother, met my father through the introduction of their family physician. My father had come to her town to build a bridge and had asked the doctor to arrange some introductions to appropriate ladies for him. My mother considered him a stable provider, and coming from a family full of drama, stability attracted her!

Going back to my immigrant paternal ancestor, I know from the record that he married three widows—improving his land holdings each time! He lived to be around 90 years old—this was the 17th century in Virginia and Maryland. He had only one son who provided all the progeny in America. As you said, marriage at that time had more to do with economics than love!

Both sides of my family were small-town people. It’s who you know in most cases that confines your choice of spouse. Many incidences of brothers marrying a pair of sisters, and not-so-distant cousins marrying, and lots of half-relationships as well.

Anyway, just wanted to say I enjoyed your show, and others I have heard as well.

Roses are pink
Violets have blues
It’s a pleasure to think
About yesterday’s news

Thanks for the show, love it!

Thank YOU, Juniper. You should know that “Yesterday’s News” was what I wanted to call the program, way back when. Apparently it’s also the name of a kitty litter brand, however, and between that and various other objections, we wound up with BackStory. Hard now to think that the show’s name ever could have been something else!

-Tony (BackStory Producer)

Thanks for the show, love it!

I got to know a woman from India some years ago. She was living in the US cooking and keeping house while her daughter was attending graduate school. The family was quite worldly but still felt it was essential that the daughter not live alone until she was married and that she have good, home-cooked, Indian food to eat.

The parents planned to choose several possible suitors for the daughter who would then choose among them who to marry. Her marriage had been arranged and she claimed to be very happy in it. The mother asked me one day why there was so much divorce in the US since people chose their own partners and even lived together before getting married? This puzzled her tremendously. The question came out of the blue and the answer I came up with was that it was because of peoples’ unrealistic expectations for marriage, largely shaped by media and pop psychology. I would love to know how true this theory is.

I adore your show!!! thank you so much….they really make my business trips more tolerable.