Married for 75 years: Palm Beach couple met when she was 12, he was 15
Palm Beachers Ralph and Blanche Del Deo met when she was 12, he was 15 and their families were vacationing in Atlantic City. As of Nov. 29, they have been married for 75 years.
The anniversary celebration began with a cocktail party Tuesday with 30 close and long-time friends and continues today with a family barbecue, both at their home, said their daughter KT Catlin, who lives with them.
Ralph is a Palm Beach Civic Association director emeritus, and Tuesday’s guests included civic association chairman and CEO Bob Wright and his wife Susan, former civic association president Ned Barnes and his wife Ellen, Anne and Bill Metzger, Michael and Jill Kafrissen, Glorvina Schwartz, Rhinehart and Claudia Brandner and Tom and Denise Widzgowski.
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Palm Beach residents for 19 years, the couple, now 97 and 95, have four children, nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. Some are traveling from as far away as Texas and New Jersey.
The long and happy marriage included lots of common interests and an optimistic attitude. In the early years, they performed in community theater, and for years bred some of the top English pointers in the world while serving as directors with the American Kennel Club.
The Del Deos traveled all over the world when Ralph was a judge at dog shows in England, Spain and other countries and in the U.S. They also hunted and golfed together.
“We both liked the outdoors. We just always tried to be optimistic and think of each other,” Ralph said Thursday. “She could ride a horse better than I could. She is an amazing gal. She is quiet and polite and so capable.”
He recalled a 1947 honeymoon trip through the U.S. where they drove all the way to Mexico until they ran out of money.
“By the time we got back and got on with our lives, we knew each other very well. We liked each other even better. We really were a team and we tried to stay that way all our lives,” Ralph said.
Their ties to Palm Beach go back decades, to the 1950s or earlier, as Blanche’s parents, Philip and Blanche Wagner, had a house on Coral Way. Blanche won a Sailfish Club fishing tournament in the 1950s.
“They sent us the fish. We didn’t have a big enough wall for it in our house in Nutley, New Jersey. After that, if we went sailfishing, we always released the fish,” Ralph said.
The Del Deos lived in Jupiter and Palm City before moving to Palm Beach, where Blanche had always wanted to live.
“Palm Beach is a lot different than when we were first here, but it is still a beautiful place. It has a lot of very nice and interesting people. We have had friends here for a long time, and it’s funny how that at some time or another, everybody seems to come through Palm Beach,” Ralph said.
Ralph also has a positive view about the state of the United States.
“We have such a wonderful country. People ought to sit back and take a look. Of course it can be improved, but we have a great thing here. I have been enough places to know that this is a great country,” he said.
Ralph, a retired trial attorney who practiced in New Jersey, where his clients included large pharmaceutical companies and the United Parcel Service, was born in Newark, New Jersey.
Blanche, who had a successful real estate career in Somerset County, New Jersey, after raising their children, was born and raised in Sidney, Ohio, where her family owned the cast-iron cookware manufacturer, Wagner Ware.
“Their parents both booked a summer vacation at the same time at the Dennis Hotel” in Atlantic City, Catlin said. “They were bringing children and they wanted a place with no bar. They met at the hotel when they had what we would call a mixer today, for the younger people. My mother and father were the only ones who showed up.
“Mother told me she knew then that he was the man she was going to marry. They stayed in touch. They wrote letters,” Catlin said.
Blanche, a student at Duquesne University, invited Ralph to an event there. When she walked down a grand staircase, he was “lovestruck” and knew he wanted to marry her, Catlin said.
During World War II, Ralph served in the Navy but was not deployed, his daughter said. Ralph graduated from Princeton in 1946, and then went to law school at Rutgers after they were married in November 1947 in Blanche’s hometown of Sidney.
Ralph, a driven Type A personality, was the perfect match for Blanche, who was even-tempered and calming.
“They love each other and were each other’s best friend. They spent as much time doing things together as they could,” Catlin said. “It is not that they always agreed or saw things they same way. They didn’t keep secrets. They talked to each other.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach couple celebrates 75 years of marriage
