Feb 14, 2018 4 min read

Valentine’s Day is twice as sweet for a former Washington County couple.

They’re also celebrating their 65th anniversary today.

Retired Sgt. Maj. Raymond and Barbara Moran were married on Feb. 14, 1953.

The pair eloped on Feb. 13, and were married in Ligonier shortly after midnight on Valentine’s Day by a local magistrate.

“A policeman saw us walking around the square around midnight and he said, ‘Can I help you kids?'” recalled Raymond. “We said we were looking for a justice of the peace and he said yes, he did know one, and he’d take us to him. He was the witness at our wedding.”

Their family has grown over the past six decades, and the Morans have three children, six grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

The Morans, who now live in Odenton, Md., have local roots. Barbara was born in Slovan and graduated from Burgettstown High School. Raymond grew up in Latrobe, and graduated from Latrobe High School, which he attended with Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers.

The couple agree: they are still in love.

“Here we are, 65 years later, and we’re still together, and we have enjoyed a life of happiness,” said Raymond, who is 88.

The Morans met at the Washington County Courthouse, where Barbara worked as a secretary for former county controller George F. Roule. Raymond, who served in the Army and Army Reserve for 65 years – he spent 30 years on active duty and 35 years as a civilian recruiter in the U.S. Army Reserve – had a recruiting office in the courthouse lobby.

She was 17; he was 21.

For Raymond, it was love at first sight.

Barbara, now 84, however, wasn’t as certain.

Raymond courted her for about two years (a romantic, he wrote Barbara a poem almost every night and placed it on her desk in the courthouse for her to find when she arrived at work in the morning) before proposing they run away to get married on Valentine’s Day.

The secret to a happy marriage, said Raymond, is easy.

“When Barbara says she likes something, I say I love it,” he said.

For Barbara, the key is balancing personal space and support.

“I think the reason we’ve done so well is that we give each other a lot of space. And whatever Raymond likes to do, I try to help him and encourage him, and he does the same for me,” she said. “We don’t ever stop each other from doing things that we like to do, and I think it makes for getting along better.”

And, she said, Raymond was “always so good and so kind to people.”

Raymond, who enlisted in the Army in 1948, served in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia and during Desert Storm.

The couple said it was difficult to spend significant periods of time away from each other, and Barbara worried about Raymond’s safety while he was serving.

She wrote him letters often, and frequently included photos and food packages.

Raymond recalled she sent thoughtful little items, too, including leaves from trees in the autumn since he missed the changing seasons while he was in Asia and the Middle East.

“It was very difficult, but the thing that kept me going was Barbara’s nice pictures and letters,” said Raymond, whose nickname is the “Old Soldier,” a nod to his mark in the military as its oldest and longest-serving recruiter. “It meant a lot to me.”

Barbara knew early on in their relationship the military was an important part of Raymond’s life. On their first date, he took her to a one-day recruiting conference in Pittsburgh.

The couple later got married in St. Hilary Church, Washington.

They usually celebrate their anniversary at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, but this year the pair marked the occasion at home with family this past weekend, with a special dinner prepared by two of their granddaughters.

According to Barbara, the couple almost got married on Feb. 13.

They arrived at the office of the justice of the peace before the clock had struck midnight, and the magistrate offered to perform the ceremony and write Feb. 14 on the certificate.

Raymond, however, declined.

Said Raymond, “It had to be on Sweetheart Day.”