In November of 2023, Steve and Barbara Russell celebrated 50 years of marriage.
The couple marked the occasion by taking the trip of a lifetime.
Traveling to France, Spain, and Italy, the Russells saw such vestiges of historical significance as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Statue of David, and much, much more, and the Parker County couple said it was all that they could have hoped for and more.
“For our 50th anniversary, I talked to Steve and said we need to take a big trip,” Barbara said. “He said, ‘Okay, what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go to Italy.’ My grandfather died in Florence and my father would go to Florence on business, so I really wanted to go to Florence. I really wanted to close the generation gap. We decided to take a cruise, and we saw the most beautiful things ever.”
The Russells made the trip to Western Europe via the Queen Victoria and for Barbara, who taught in the Aledo ISD for 28 years, the experience brought much of what she taught to life.
“I was a history major and I also minored in Spanish,” Barbara said. “To go to these places in Rome and Florence and Spain, oh my gosh it made me so very happy because that was what I studied for many years. So that was exciting. We don’t take big trips like that at all, and we just decided for our 50th anniversary that we were going to see something that we’d never seen before. That’s what made it special.”
As Valentine’s Day approaches and their 51st anniversary has now passed, the couple reflected on what it takes to make a marriage work for more than five decades.
Originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, Barbara, 78, said the recipe for a successful marriage is really not all that complicated.
“We’re pretty happy,” Barbara said. “We like to laugh. We are very supportive of each other, and he gives great hugs.”
The Russells have lived in Willow Park since 1985 and still remember how they first met.
“It was a blind date,” Barbara said. “It was in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was 28 years old and I was 28 years old. I opened the door and I saw this beautiful man in front of me, and I still remember the exact words that he said to me. I said to him, ‘I’ve seen you around before, you’re tall.’ And he said to me, ‘I’ve seen you around before, too, and you’re always smiling.’ Oh yeah— he got me on the first sentence.”
The couple went out for a baseball game and dinner on their first date, but the second date was the turning point in what would eventually become a shared journey of 51 years.
“He came to my parent’s house and he said, ‘What do you want to do tonight?” Barbara said. “I was all ready to go out for dinner, and I said, ‘How about a game of tennis?’ His face lit up and he said, ‘You just stay right there. I’m going to go home and get changed.’
“We went to the tennis courts and the rest is history. We both love sports. He is very lucky in that because I like many sports. So basically, that’s how it all started, and it’s been like that ever since.”
“I think it’s the comfort of having a friend in your wife and someone that supports you,” Steve said. “We raised two kids and we’ve done pretty well. We’ve gotten to go to a lot of places, and it is nice to share those things. The older you get, the more you realize how rare it is that people stay together for that long. Knowing that you have that going for you is a comforting thing in a stressful world.”
Steve, 78, who worked the last 30 years of his career as a golf professional at Leonard Golf Links, said that marriage is not always easy, but if he could give any advice to young couples just starting out this Valentine’s Day, it would be to remember that one does not always have to be right, to keep egos in check, and practice a few important habits.
“When we have issues or things going on, we talk about them,” Steve said. “We work our way through them. You have to realize that it’s not about you. In other words, it’s not about Steve Russell. It’s about Steve and Barbara and family and that’s what’s really important. If you let your ego get a little too elevated, you’re going to create tension and it’s going to come back to bite you.
“The world we live in today seems to be so ‘me, me, me, me.’ I think that not letting that eat you up is the key to any relationship.”
Barbara agreed and said she would add one other thing.
“That’s why I love him,” Barbara said. “He is kind, and believe me there were times where sometimes I call us ‘Mr. and Mrs. Grumpy Cat,’ because we do get grumpy. But every day he comes home he’s kind and we get a giggle in, so I would say it is being kind to each other, pure and simple, and do it in the right way.”
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