After meeting at a Germantown skating rink and dating for about a year, Kenny Lipps and Pat Weinel agreed to stand up for a relative of Lipps who was getting married in Kentucky.
Someone suggested Lipps and Weinel should get married, too.
What the heck, they said.
Pat was 15 and Kenny was 17, though he looked much older. So they secretly crossed state lines, took a blood test and married on July 28, 1951 in Lawrenceburg, Ind.
“We were just kids out on a lark,” she said. “The next thing we knew we were married. It was that simple.”
What followed was anything but simple.
They waited three days — the minimum time before an annulment is invalid — until they told her parents. Her father was so upset that he issued an arrest warrant on his son-in-law in three states and multiple times threatened to kill him.
Eventually, they became close friends and deer hunted together for 40 years.
A marriage family and friends said would never last has produced one son, two grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a lifetime of memories.
Kenny is 91, his wife is 89 and their health is declining. Their son, Scott Lipps, a longtime Warren County politician and small business owner, said his parents, due to mobility issues, will have to move out of the house they have lived in for 63 years.
“I’m so proud of them and I love them dearly,” he said. “But it’s sad to see their quality of life is gone.”
Lipps is 68 and his parents are living. He knows those odds are staggering.
“God blessed me with them,” he said.
They wanted to have more children, but after childbirth complications, Pat was unable to get pregnant.
“You take what God gives you and live with it,” she said.
Kenny Lipps said it didn’t take him long — just a few laps around that skating rink — to know Pat was the girl for him.
He couldn’t place his heart on hold just because she was 15.
“She’s beautiful‚” he said while sitting in the couple’s Miamisburg home.
That brought a smile to his wife’s face.
She was asked the secret to a long and happy marriage.
“I wish I knew,” she said. “If I had that secret it would be good.“
Her husband answered: “We’ve never been separated. I still got her. We have made every decision since then together.”
The longest they have been apart is three days during his deer hunting trips in southern Ohio.
After getting married and living in a Miamisburg trailer park for years, they both earned their GEDs.
He worked in three factories and was promoted to foreman at all the businesses, including NCR in Dayton and Hobart in Troy.
He still has a driver’s license, but doesn’t drive. They spend most of their time at home. It’s where they’re most comfortable.
Toward the end of the interview, Pat used a walker and slowly made her way into a bedroom.
She returned with the couple’s marriage license and three small black and white pictures of the two teenagers.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“We’ve had a really good life,” he said.
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