Knock on the door leads to marriage of 56 years

Friday, Jan. 19, 2024

MURRAY — Fifty-seven years ago, Jack Hale became disillusioned with the dating scene, in particular with the girl he had been seeing. She was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Hale, a cradle Catholic, really wanted to marry a Catholic woman.

Not knowing where to find his true love, “I told God I was going to knock and I was going to seek and if I didn’t find, I was going to bag it,” he recalled.

Just after his prayer he felt inspired to look on the bulletin board at his home parish of St. Ambrose in Salt Lake City, something he never did. There he found a flyer about a Catholic university discussion group. Thinking it sounded interesting, he showed up at the appointed place at the listed time. His future wife, Taffy, was the person who opened the door when he knocked on it, he said.

Still, it was not love at first sight. Jack was just one of several new people attending the group that night and he made no particular impression on Taffy, she said. It was only later, when their pastor Fr. Philip Dankin asked the two of them to chaperone a Catholic Youth League hayride, that they got together. Although they got lost on their way to the hayride’s remote location, they ended up finding each other at the event. Nine months after they met, they were married at St. Ambrose on June 10, 1967.

Over the years since then they’ve worked through many challenges together. One of the first was when Taffy had to tell Jack she had her own identity and was not going to be his secretary.

“I think the biggest hurdle we overcame was that Jack wanted me to be him,” Taffy said. “He wanted me to be a female him, and I was supposed to be his personal secretary. It was quite an impasse when I told him I didn’t want to be like him, I wanted to be like me.”

 They got over that and many other hurdles and began to build a life together. 

“I realized I couldn’t steamroll over this lady,” Jack said. “I had to somehow comply with this lovely little creature God had given me, if I wanted to keep her.”

Their faith has always been an intrinsic part of the Hales’ relationship. Praying and attending Mass together has been particularly important.

“We learned to pray together, which I think has made a big difference in our marriage,” Jack said.

Individual prayer has also been essential, Taffy said. “In every marriage there’s always impasses; some of them are serious. We have had those, and for me, I had to pray not just with Jack but by myself, talking to God  about things.”

Early on, the couple participated in Marriage Encounter, which gave them guidance in their relationship.

“That was the top of the box to the puzzle of marriage,” Taffy said. 

They became a Marriage Encounter team couple until the needs of their growing family of four boys took up all of their time. When the boys were older, however, they became team leaders for Engaged Encounter, a ministry they served for 30 years. 

“Those two together kept us focused on the holiness of marriage,” Taffy said. 

“Both pounded into us that love was a decision, not an emotion,” Jack added. “We realized that the decision to love doesn’t mean that I always want things to go my way. It’s the realization that love is what is the best good for the other person. So we tried to work on it.”

Over their 56-year marriage the Hales have learned to trust and respect each other in a deep way they never anticipated, he said. “We both had to earn each other’s respect and we did that by following what Christ taught.”

The Hales advise couples to be slow to consider divorce even when they face difficult times. 

“When we ‘fall in love’ it’s a high, and then as we start to know each other better we start to peel back that illusion I have of Jack and I start to see the real Jack. Then I’m moving more into love,” Taffy said. “The more you move into love the more those illusions peel back and it gets a little rugged and you have to work through those together. We’ve both had to be committed to working through the problems.”

While the world does not glamorize long marriages the way it does new love, there are rewards to such a relationship that grow more tender over time, Taffy said. “I think just seeing him during the day, seeing him at night, just seeing him in my day is a joy.”