Two hearts beat as one

By Patricia Morrison, News Editor

February 13, 2009 10:55 pm

— COLUMBUS, Ind. — It’s been almost 70 years and Ralph and Mary Jo Risley are still in love.
The couple will celebrate their 70th anniversary on April 9 in Columbus, but it all started in Daviess County.
“I wrote her a note in school and got in trouble,” Ralph said. He thinks the note incident happened in the eighth grade at Plainville, where both he and Mary Jo Colvert were students. Six years later the two would become one when they exchanged vows in the Plainville Christian Church parsonage on Easter Sunday.
“The pastor got $80 a month back then, and I gave him $10 so he was happy to get it,” Ralph chuckled.
The two had grown up in Daviess County and after they married Ralph worked on the levy before taking a job at NSWC Crane. Later he would go back to farming fulltime.
The couple had a full life caring for their only child Brenda Gayle. Mary Jo was the girls 4-H leader in Steele Township for 13 years and the couple enjoyed watching their daughter grow up and eventually marry.
While Daviess County was home, the Risleys also enjoyed traveling and have actually gone around the world. Ralph said they had welcomed a foreign exchange student from India into their home through 4-H and jumped at the chance when his family invited them to visit him on their coffee plantation in India.
“We flew to Bangkok and then to India,” Ralph said. “Then we flew home. So we’ve actually been around the world.”
After retirement, Ralph and Mary Jo moved to Florida in 1984 for 14 years. They went down to visit and ended up having a house built.
“Sometimes I miss Florida but only in the winter,” Ralph said.
The couple moved to Columbus 11 years ago to be closer to family including their granddaughter Kathy Floyd of Bloomington, and her twin daughters. They also have a grandson Kurk Sylvester, who has two sons. Now great-great-grandchildren have been added to the family.
“They’re all pretty nice little kids,” Ralph said about his growing family.
Granddaughter Kathy is owner of Beautiful Creations in Bloomington a boutique that caters to cancer sufferers. She said her grandmother Mary Jo, a cancer survivor, was the inspiration for the business. Floyd and her mother, Brenda Sylvester, started the business 22 years ago and ran it together until Brenda’s death in 2004.
“My mother was also a cancer survivor,” Floyd said. “She was diagnosed with cancer at age 36 and was only given a few months to live.”
Fortunately, Brenda was included in an experimental program at the IU Medical Center and the new drug worked, allowing her another 20-plus years with her family, husband Joseph, daughter, son, grandchildren and especially her parents.
Ralph is now 89 and Mary Jo 88. While age may have slowed the couple down a bit, they still live in their own home and even made it through the floods in Columbus last spring. The couple had just returned from the grocery store when a neighbor knocked on the door to tell them the water was rising. In the short time since their return, water had entered their street and was halfway up their driveway. It didn’t come any closer and Ralph said they were stuck in the house for about a week, “watching the helicopter fly over and the boats go by.” Having be prepared as a motto, there was no question of running out of food as granddaughter Kathy said Mary Jo always has a full freezer and could probably have fed the neighborhood.
Ralph said his birthday celebration was a little different this year as Mary Jo forgot his birthday so instead of the angel food cake she always makes him he got brownies. But that was all right as they were together just as they have been for 70 years.
Ralph is expecting that angel food cake today, as it has also become a Valentine tradition and he thinks there will another cake in April when they celebrate their anniversary with family.
“Whenever we had an argument, I went for a walk,” Ralph said when asked about the secret of a successful marriage. “I got a lot of fresh air. There have to be two to argue. So I’d walk.”
The couple have also made the church a part of their lives, first at Plainville Christian, then First Christian in Washington and now East Columbus Christian Church.
“Everyday’s a good day,” Ralph said. “Some are just better than others.”

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