Mary Martha Questel says she fell in love with her husband, Bill, the first time she saw him in 1947. For Bill, it took a little longer, but he came around. They married two years after meeting and remain devoted to each other 76 years later.
The Questels are the longest-married couple to be recognized at this year’s diocesan Jubilee of Anniversaries, which will be celebrated at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10 as part of a Mass with Bishop Earl Fernandes in Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral, 212 E. Broad St.
They won’t be able to attend because Bill’s health issues make the 200-mile round trip between the church and their home in Portsmouth too difficult, but their names will be mentioned, and they will receive a certificate signed by the bishop.
William Louis Questel and Mary Martha Welty were married on March 7, 1949 in the rectory of Portsmouth St. Mary Church, with the late Father George Marzluf as the priest witnessing the sacrament they conferred upon each other.
“Bill was not a Catholic at that time, and the church rules then said that if only one member of a couple was Catholic, the wedding could not take place inside the church,” Mary Martha said. Bill said he joined the Catholic Church about 35 or 40 years ago.
Mary Martha, now 92 years old, still has a vivid memory of the day she met her future husband, who is 97.
“I was still in high school, working after school at the former Glick’s furniture store in downtown Portsmouth, when I was introduced to this handsome young man with a big dimple in his chin and a big smile who was starting to work there that day,” she said. “When I walked home with my friends, I told them ‘I’m going marry that man someday.’
‘“You silly girl,’ they said, and I told them, ‘Just wait and see.’ Two years later, we were married. It was love at first sight then, and it still is.”
Bill said the day he met Mary Martha was his first day at work after three years during and after World War II in the service, first with the Merchant Marine, then with the U.S. Army Air Corps.
“At that point, I was just happy my time in the service was done, and I wasn’t really thinking about girls or marriage or anything like that,” Bill said. “But I saw her every day at the store, and, after a while, I realized she was the best-looking and the biggest-hearted girl I’d ever known.
“She was part of a family of seven, and I loved them all. I got along great with her mother. After the first time we went out and came back to talk with her parents, her dad said, ‘Come back and stay longer,’ so I did.
“It wasn’t long before we got to talking about marriage, and I’ve never regretted it. We would have gotten married sooner than we did, but Mary Martha’s mother said she had to wait till she was 18. In those days, you listened to your mother or your future mother-in-law.”
Bill graduated early from Portsmouth High School and knew he would be drafted into the military once he turned 18. “A friend and I were hanging around a park one day and heard the Merchant Marines were looking for recruits, so we signed up, and I entered the service on March 30, 1944, my 18th birthday,” he said.
From then until nearly the end of World War II, he served on several ships carrying troops and supplies throughout the world. Among his missions were ones that took him from New York to Venezuela and back to carry oil; from New Orleans to Ascension Island between Brazil and Africa to carry troops and supplies on a converted Cunard cruise liner; and from Bayonne, New Jersey to Glasgow, Scotland, with 100-octane airplane fuel used by planes bombing Germany in the last days of World War II.
Bill’s hitch with the Merchant Marine was completed shortly after Japan surrendered to end the war, so he signed up with the Army for 18 months and spent most of that time in the charting (map) room at the Tachikawa Air Base near Tokyo.
He has donated his military memorabilia to the Boneyfiddle Military Museum in Portsmouth.
Bill was a salesman for the furniture store for nearly 30 years until it closed in 1976. He then began his own antiques business, Bill’s Ole Barn.
“It operated out of our former house, which had three stories,” Mary Martha said. “The first floor was filled with antiques, and we lived on the other two. We also had a barn out back with more stuff. That’s where the store name came from.”
The store lasted for about 15 years, “until I put him out of business,” Mary Martha said. “After my time at the furniture store, I worked in a foundry and left there, then when the furniture store closed, I returned to work to help Bill.
“The antique business takes a lot of effort. You go out looking for things, and it seems you come back either with nothing or a truckload of stuff. One day, I told Bill that it had become too stressful to me, and we ended up agreeing to sell the store and the house. Within six weeks, a woman made a good offer on the house, and she moved in after we had three auctions to get rid of all the antiques.”
The couple then moved to the ranch-style home where they live today. This allowed them to travel extensively. They visited all 50 states and several European countries, with one of their trips taking them to St. Peter’s Basilica and a general audience with the pope – they can’t remember which one.
Mary Martha said one particularly memorable trip came in the late 1990s, when the couple joined a group of students from Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, most of them several decades younger, on a visit to Greece. “That’s when the announcement was made that Athens was getting the 2004 Olympics, and it was an all-night party,” Mary Martha said.
The Questels were active at Portsmouth St. Mary Church until health problems limited Bill’s mobility. Both were parish council members at various times, and Mary Martha was an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, a lector and a church cleaner.
“We have no children, so we consider our church family to be an extended family,” she said. “Being able to associate with them has always been a special part of our lives, especially now that Bill has to use a transport chair to get to church. Everybody calls him ‘the Walmart greeter.’ All the men shake his hand, and the women kiss the top of his head. It boosts both of our spirits.
“We’ve always had great relations with our priests, and certainly with Father (Brian) Beal (pastor) and Fathers (Michael) Fulton and (David) Glockner (parochial vicars) in their work to get all the parishes in Scioto County to come together as the Scioto Catholic Community.
“We also have great deacons in Deacons (Chris) Varacalli, (Jim) Sturgeon and (Terry) Acox. And we’ve been blessed with having three sisters of the Leaven of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the last two years in our schools.
“Until the last few years, we didn’t have much stress in our lives,” Mary Martha said. “We never had a real argument – a disagreement or two, but nothing major. Then COVID came in 2020, and it’s caused a lot of stress.
“Bill had a knee replacement and several other surgeries and has heart problems, but the most stressful part was having him at the Hillview Retirement Center and being able to communicate with him only through a glass door every day. We saw each other but were apart most of the time, and that was hard.”
Bill is back at home, where he uses a walker and has a transport chair for longer distances. He needs assistance with dressing and bathing, which Mary Martha provides.
“I’m blessed to be able to take care of him without other help,” Mary Martha said. “Just being able to be together with him is all that matters to me. We pray the rosary and other prayers together every day, and in the morning, I read him what he wants to know.
“Faith is the most important thing we have. It’s what gets us through every day and makes the stress something you can deal with. If a young couple starting out were to ask us how to stay married as long as us, I’d tell them, ‘Have faith in God and each other, never go to bed angry, and good luck.’”