'You can always work through it'

ZANESVILLE −The first time Jim Grubb laid eyes on his future wife, he was sweeping the gym as punishment for some long forgotten transgression. He was a sophomore at McConnelsville's Malta-McConnelsville High School, JoAnn Best was on stage rehearsing for her eighth grade graduation, reciting the preamble to the Constitution.

"The stage is about this high," Jim said, holding his hand around chest high. "I'm down here and I look up and there's this good looking girl with a short skirt on and that caught my eye."

JoAnn remembers seeing Jim playing basketball. He was a good athlete, she said. "I remember thinking he's kind of cute, I'd kind of like to know him maybe."

Neither had a car, so they would walk from opposite ends of town to the McConnelsville Opera House in the center of town to catch a movie. They'd sit together, eventually got to the holding hands stage.

"For most young people in McConnelsville at the time, that's where their romances started," she said. "We just went out," JoAnn said. "But like five times a week," she said. "There wasn't anything else to do," she said of teenage life in Morgan County in the early 1940s. "We really lived in the Opera House for several years."

"We kind of just got together, back then you didn't date, you just did," Jim said.

JoAnn said they just took it for granted they would get married, "I don't even remember him asking me," she said. Jim made it formal the summer between her sophomore and junior years with an engagement ring. "We kept it secret, nobody knew except for a few friends of mine," she said. "We didn't tell our parents or family members."

In fact, almost everyone found out they got married after they got married, as the couple eloped in Greenup Kentucky on March 27, 1948, 75 years ago.

"My mother knew we were going to get married, but she was the only one in the family," JoAnn said. "He told his mother some story about how he had business or work or something.."

It is a two and a half hour trip these days, but it undoubtedly took longer in Jim's 14-year-old 1934 Plymouth.

"We literally went through hell and high water to get married," Jim said. JoAnn was 17, Jim was 19. "We had a heck of a time getting married, but we did make it that same day," he said.

Between the three boys and Nancy, the Grubbs have 11 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. "I think that was our legacy, make families and let the families make families," Jim said.

"We were told or somehow we got the idea that in Kentucky, you could didn't have to a license or anything, you just went and got married. So that's what we thought we were doing, until we got down there and found out, no, you would have to have a marriage license, you have to have blood test. All in one day. But we did it," JoAnn said.

"I don't even know to this day how we did it," she said. "We went to the courthouse and got a license, went to the doctor and got a blood test."

"You have to bear in mind that she was 17 and I was 19 and we didn't know anything," Jim said. This elicits a giggle from JoAnn. "We were so ignorant it was pathetic," she said.

They were married in a Methodist parsonage, and headed back to McConnelsville, Mr. and Mrs. Grubb. Later that year, Mike was the first of their three sons all born about a year and a half apart. Dave and Steve were followed by Nancy, born seven years later.

Jim thought one kid would be enough. "I thought the world of the first one, and I thought 'boy, there is no way I can feel the same way about the next one,' but I did, and I have," he said. "Four beautiful children. They are great adults, and we are very proud of them."

The young family settled into McConnelsville, and after a stint at the A&P grocery store and a few years in Indiana working for a construction firm, Jim was hired on at Central Ohio Coal in 1962. He rose to be a heavy equipment repair supervisor, even working on the Big Muskie, the famous dragline that stripped much of east-central Ohio coal country. He retired in 1993.

"And I haven't done anything since," he laughs.

JoAnn started her career working for the Morgan County Herald as a typesetter, but also helping out with anything else that needed doing. When the couple moved to Zanesville she worked in Bethesda Hospital's newly formed customer service department.

"I enjoyed it very much, really liked working there," she said. "In fact, after I retired, I went back to work as a volunteer and did the same thing."

JoAnn volunteers the secret to a happy marriage with a laugh; "Stubbornness."

"We don't argue, because I won't," Jim said. "Drives me crazy, always has, because I like to argue," JoAnn counters.

The truth is, 78 years of love resulting in 75 years of marriage might not come with a secret. Some times you have to live long enough to do it with the person you want to do it with.

"This is the way it was and the way it was supposed to be," JoAnn said. "We just took it for granted, and when we had disagreements, we got through them. We work through them, and that's the secret I think. Don't let your disagreements be the thing that breaks you up, you can always work through it."

ccrook@gannett.com

740-868-3708

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This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: 'You can always work through it'