Since August! You’re pups, yet,” Pastor Robert Voss said of my husband and me after inquiring how long we had been married. As we walked through the Voss’ home, the many photos of their family and travels evidenced the length and richness of their married life. “Mature love is every bit as exciting as young love,” he shares. “It changes, of course, from the very beginning when you’re madly, madly in love. . . . Later you’re madly in love in a different way.”

The key to Bob and Carol Voss’ happy marriage of 58 years? “She is a child of God. I am a child of God,” says Bob. “We both know what that means. It is our joy. It is our strength in time of weakness. It is our help when we have troubles. It’s our hope for life. We live that every day.”

The beginning of marital bliss

The Lord certainly meant for their lives to be intertwined. When they first met, Bob, in his second year at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, was taking a nap when Carol walked in. She thought, “How can that young man sleep so much?” and found out later when she heard him snore through many a storm and their babies’ crying.

“I thought she was a very attractive young lady with beautiful brown eyes,” Bob recalls. “She was a gal who was witty and of good humor.” Carol confesses, “I always wanted to go with a man who had blonde hair and blue eyes. He had some smarts about him too.” Above all, they realized that it was the Lord who had given them a common faith, who drew them together. 

“June 24, 1951, was the beginning of our marital bliss—most of the time,” Carol shares. “It isn’t always bliss, you see. Sometimes it’s hard work.” One lesson Carol wishes she had known as a newlywed is not to laugh at her spouse’s pooh-poohs. “By that I mean things the other does differently or says or doesn’t do,” she explains. Take the time that Bob misspoke from the pulpit about the harlots, sinners, and republicans. “I know it’s not polite to laugh,” Carol says to Bob, “although you did laugh at my first baked beans. They smelled great, but they were like bullets!”

While Bob and Carol have had the common disagreement about which way the toilet paper should spin off the roll, they know it is vital to work through differences with open communication. “If you have a disagreement or you do not understand each other, you have to talk that out right away rather than build it up,” Carol reflects. “And you have to give in sometimes. You both do.”

The busy years