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- The Farringtons on their wedding day, August 9, 1953
If humor and honesty are keys to a lasting relationship, it's little wonder Frank and Diane Farrington are closing in on seven decades of marriage. Frank, who will turn 89 on February 20, was sweetly discreet about the couple's Valentine's Day traditions.
"Some of it," Frank said, "I shouldn't tell you."
But the Farringtons shared other stories of their romance, which started when they were sweethearts at Randolph Union High School. They're one of four Vermont couples who talked with Seven Days about getting together as teenagers — and staying together.
"I guess because it's true love," Frank said.
Diane and Frank Farrington
White River Junction (formerly Randolph)
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- Diane and Frank Farrington
Diane Ducharme was in 11th grade and Frank Farrington was a high school senior when they danced together at the Randolph Fish & Game Club. She was a top student in her class and a violinist; he liked farming, cars and taking care of animals. He made people laugh. Something clicked when they danced to "Tennessee Waltz" and other songs.
"I don't know what she ever saw in me," Frank said. "But I saw a pretty little girl."
She was 18 and he was 19 when they were married on August 9, 1953, in Bethel. The small ceremony — just four people, including the couple — was followed by a "shindig" at her parents' house in Randolph, Frank said. Friends and family made food and baked a cake.
The couple built a house on the farm where Frank grew up on rural Farrington Road in Randolph. They raised two sons and a daughter, and Frank and Diane each worked outside the home. He was the highway foreman in Randolph; Diane ran the front office in Randolph for a Connecticut-based business called Waterbury Companies.
At home, they divided chores. She shopped, cooked, canned and managed the household bills. He was an outdoorsman who gardened, took care of the land, and raised pigs, cows and chickens. The Farringtons cherished family vacations in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
"We got along slicker than heck," Frank said.
Seven years ago, Diane suffered a massive stroke that left her paralyzed on her right side and with limited speech. The outdoorsman came inside to stick close by his wife and care for her. Frank quickly learned to do all the things she had done in their marriage.
Two years ago, the Farringtons moved to an apartment at the Village at White River Junction, an assisted-living community. Every night, side by side and holding hands, they pray.
"Since we said 'I do,' we haven't lost each other," Frank said.
In August, they'll celebrate 70 years of marriage.
Donna and Doug Kenyon
Waitsfield
- Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
- Doug and Donna Kenyon
Donna Kenyon wore a simple white dress with a yellow ribbon around the bodice to her wedding in summer 1971. It was sewn by her mother and a friend. Doug Kenyon, the groom, was dressed in a rented tux. He was 18. She was 15 and needed permission from a probate judge to get married.
"I remember the judge asking me, 'Do you think you are mature enough to have a marriage and raise a family?'" Donna, 67, recalled. "And I said, 'Yes, I am.'"
After a church ceremony in Waterbury, the couple had a barbecue with friends and family on the lawn of her parents' house in Moretown. Six months later — and one month after she turned 16 — Donna gave birth to their daughter Tricia.
"We finished growing up together," Donna said of herself and Doug. "I don't know that we really knew what love was back then. Now we are absolutely in love, and we have a lot of respect for each other."
Together they raised three children, and they own and operate Kenyon's Variety Store in Waitsfield.
Donna was in eighth grade when she met Doug through her older sister. She was drawn to his "James Dean personality," she said, referring to the 1950s Rebel Without a Cause movie star. He wore a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off. Their first date was to the drive-in to see M*A*S*H*.
Fifty years after his Dean-style teenagehood, Doug revealed a level of cool explaining the success of their union.
"I just say, 'Yes, dear, that's the way to do it,'" Doug, 69, said.
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- The Kenyons on their wedding day, July 10, 1971
In the early years of their marriage, Doug milked cows on his family's farm and drove a school bus after the morning milking. Donna was up at 4 a.m. to make doughnuts with lard she rendered from their pork. On his school bus run, Doug delivered the doughnuts to a local restaurant to bring in extra money.
Their children Nicholas and Kristy were born when Donna was in her early twenties. She sewed her kids' school clothes or bought them with money earned from a summer roadside vegetable stand. She completed her high school diploma. Though Donna and Doug were busy running the store — which until the pandemic was open seven days a week until 7 p.m. — the family always ate dinner together.
"We pride ourselves on eating dinner at the table, and we still do it," Donna said. "I think that it brought us closer together."
On December 8, 2021, Donna's 66th birthday, the Kenyons' son, Nicholas, died at age 43. In their grief, Donna and Doug hold each other, she said.
"We just love each other," Donna said. "We get through."
David Edleson and Tim Owings
Lincoln
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- Tim Owings and David Edleson at a bar mitzvah in 2019
David Edleson was the new kid in town when he showed up at Chattooga High School in Summerville, Ga., in 1975 wearing sailor pants that buttoned in the front and a striped French fisherman's T-shirt. The ninth grader caught classmate Tim Owings' eye when he walked into their health sciences class.
"I knew from the moment I saw him that we were going to be best friends," Owings said. "And he came and sat right next to me, and we've been together ever since."
Edleson's parents traveled for his father's work, and they were sometimes away for a week or two. That gave the teenage boys living in "Marjorie Taylor Greene country," as Edleson described the region — referring to Georgia's ultraconservative U.S. representative —a chance to hang out together parent-free.
The teens watched "Saturday Night Live" together and went on a first date with another couple, two girls, to see Star Wars. They became "really close friends with benefits," Edleson said. Owens put it another way: "We would've had a baby, but..."
In college, Edleson and Owings lived in different states and saw each other during school vacations and summer break. When Edleson graduated a semester early from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., he moved to Atlanta to live with Owings, who attended Georgia Tech. They threw themselves a big wedding party in December 1982 (though they couldn't legally marry) and were officially joined in civil union and then marriage when the law allowed.
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- Tim Owings and David Edleson in Egypt in 1985
Edleson and Owings, now 61, live in Lincoln in a house they built. Edleson is the rabbi at Temple Sinai in South Burlington, where Owings — who converted to Judaism decades ago — is an active volunteer. Owings is also a hair stylist who works part time at a salon in Williston. They are compatibly unconcerned with housework, but Owings performs a thorough cleaning every Friday before the Sabbath.
Their partnership grew from friendship and was strengthened by joint decision making and shared experiences, such as living in Israel for three and a half years. But it was the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, a health crisis both large-scale and personal, that fully forged their commitment and attachment, Edleson suggested.
They were living in New York City at the height of the epidemic, where they were active in a gay synagogue and witness to repeated death. As their friends got sick and died, Edleson and Owings learned not to take for granted the important people in their lives, especially each other.
Emma Adu-Damoah and Chase Corbin
Burlington
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- Emma Adu-Damoah and Chase Corbin at the Burlington High School senior prom in 2016
By the time Chase Corbin texted Emma Adu-Damoah to ask her out, they'd been friends for about eight years. They knew each other through Adu-Damoah's cousin, who was a close childhood friend of Corbin's in Underhill.
Every so often, Corbin expressed his interest in Adu-Damoah to her cousin, but he wanted to be sure it was OK with his buddy if he asked her out. So one day Corbin checked. He recalled that his friend laughed and said that would definitely be OK.
"He knew that I was a good dude and would treat his cousin good," said Corbin, a 2015 graduate of Mount Mansfield Union High School. "So I asked her out, and she was also really excited. She kind of had a crush on me back then."
It was summer 2015, before Adu-Damoah's senior year at Burlington High School, when Corbin texted her. He wrote something about hanging out together. Yes, she replied, she'd like to do that. But she clarified the language: "It's a date," she wrote.
Ironically, Corbin's text arrived just after Adu-Damoah had "announced to the universe" that she was done dating and through with men. "It was kind of divine that way," she said.
- Daria Bishop
- Emma Adu-Damoah and Chase Corbin
Once they overcame the awkwardness of childhood friends on a first date — a "poorly planned" trip to a department store to smell candles, as Corbin described it — the two hit it off. A later walk at the Pinnacle in Burlington's Ethan Allen Park, where Corbin carved their initials in a railing where other couples had done the same, was a more memorable occasion.
Corbin, 26, is a brewer at Burlington Beer and an electrician. Adu-Damoah, 25, is an artist and a bartender at Bluebird Barbecue. The Burlington couple, who've lived together since 2019 and aren't married, support each other's interests and enjoy time hanging out and chilling together, they said.
"I've been an artist my whole life, and Chase has been able to provide supplies and space to help me develop my skills that way," Adu-Damoah said. (You can view her art on Instagram at e.a.d_arts.) She's also creating a podcast, "Generation Soul Speak," which she expects to release in the spring.
In turn, Adu-Damoah supports Corbin's interest in brewing, which has developed from homebrewing into an occupation.
"It's being on the same page and being able to be transparent about how you're feeling," she said. "And making adjustments to further prolong the relationship."
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