‘Partners in everything’: Couple celebrates 70 years of marriage

FRASER — Who knew a date for hamburgers could be the start of a seven-decade union? Well, Paul and Sharon Marinello might’ve had an inkling.

“You know what they say in the movies? ‘I saw her and I knew I was going to marry her.’ Well, close to it,” Paul said. “I knew I had to have her.”

Sharon went to an all-girls high school in Detroit called Goldberg. Paul’s high school, also in Detroit, was called Wilbur Wright. The two met in 1953 when Paul’s school held its “summer review,” which he described as a talent show held at the Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial Building in Detroit. Paul went with a few friends and Sharon did the same. When Sharon and her friends sat down, Paul and his friends sat behind them. When one of Sharon’s friends moved seats, Paul sat next to Sharon.

At the show, Paul asked Sharon out for hamburgers. They went with two other couples, taking Paul’s 1948 Plymouth to Cupid’s Drive-In Restaurant at Conner Street and East Warren Avenue in Detroit.

“He drove me home and asked for my phone number, which he remembered,” Sharon said. “He called the next night.”

Paul graduated high school in 1953, and Sharon graduated the following year. They wed Aug. 27, 1954, at Faith Presbyterian Church in Detroit.

“It was a small church wedding,” Paul said.

They first moved into the upper flat of a house on Manistique Street at East Warren Avenue in Detroit. They moved to Fraser when they were told their home was in the way of construction of the freeway in 1957. They picked Fraser, which was still a township at the time, when they saw an ad in the paper for new homes. The house was $15,250, and the couple put $500 down.

The couple has been there ever since. They became close with their neighbors, many of whom had children who were the same age as their kids. They’d golf, bowl and go out to dinner together. There would be a neighborhood Christmas party. The couple raised two children at the house: Frank and Lynne.

“Every night we had coffee on the front porch,” Sharon remembers about the neighborhood.

The couple hasn’t felt the need to move over the years.

“I’m not one for change,” Sharon said. “Everybody used to say, ‘Why don’t you go to a condo?’ Why would I want to move to a condo when I have a nice home that’s paid for. I like the neighborhood.”

“We don’t need a bigger house,” Paul said. “We have a living room we never sit in.”

The pair co-own PENKA Tool Corp., a commercial and industrial equipment supplier. Paul started working in the space in 1962 and bought the business from the previous owner in 1985. The name comes from the first letter of the first name of each of their five grandchildren.

“We’re partners in everything,” Paul said.

When asked how they stayed together for 70 years?

“I didn’t always like him, but I will always love him,” Sharon said with a laugh. “You’ve got to have your arguments and you’ve got to let go.”

“Patience and forgiveness,” Paul added.

“Sometimes you don’t talk for a few days,” Sharon said.

“But then you get over it,” Paul said. “There really is no secret to it, you just take it one day at a time.”

To celebrate their anniversary, Paul and Sharon will travel to Frankenmuth with their family for the first time in about five years. In the past, the family had held Thanksgiving dinner in the northern Michigan city.

The couple now has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Sharon said some of the kids from their neighborhood still get together all these years later. Their daughter, Lynne, eventually moved across the street from her parents.

“We’re blessed,” Sharon said.

“They set a stellar example for all of us for how to stay happily married for a very long time,” said Ed Marinello, the couple’s grandson, who works at the family’s shop.

Of their friends on the street, they’re one of the last couples still living.

“Thank God we’re still here,” Paul said. “We’re as happy as we’re going to be.”

Fraser Mayor Michael Lesich congratulated the pair on their long marriage at the Aug. 8 City Council meeting.

“Their story is and always will be part of Fraser’s rich legacy of family and friendships that span lifetimes,” Lesich said.