If you’re looking for the definition of true partnership, you might want to consider Ted and Marguerite Butler.

The Oakdale couple is celebrating 70 years of marriage, a life-long partnership of friends and coworkers.

The couple met on a double date about 72 years ago – however they weren’t dating each other Marguerite told The Herald during a small family celebration in Florence. “We were both with someone else.”

Later, Ted showed up at her door and soon Ted was making the drive from Oakdale to Croton on a regular basis. While they dated for two years, Marguerite trained to be a teacher and took over the Union School between Camden and Dawn Townships. It was the same school Ted’s mother had taught in.

Pretty soon the pair were planning for a wedding at the United Church in Croton. Marguerite remembers the day well. “It rained in the morning but the sun came out in the afternoon,” she says. A photograph shows the couple standing among the trees decked in their finest, both smiling broadly. “I though she looked pretty good,” says Ted.

When asked if they ever thought they would make it to 70 years, they both smile and then Marguerite says “I hardly remember a day I wasn’t married.”

Through out their marriage, the pair have been true partners, working side-by-side on the family farm. “She helped me to do everything,” says Ted. “Something she took longer to learn – like running a cross cut saw – but she can do anything I asked her.”

Well, almost anything, interjected Marguerite. “There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do on the farm, other than cultivate. I never did learn to do that,” she says with a laugh.

Both say their love of hard work is among their best qualities.

And while there was always work, there was also a lot of fun; much of that with friends who would come to their home to play cards. “Sometimes we’d play till two or three in the morning, but it was all in fun,” says Marguerite.

And the pair is still full of fun; they received 70^th Anniversary congratulations from the Queen Elizabeth II, the Lieutenant Governor, and the Prime Minister to which Marguerite joked “I guess I’d better not be so hard on him now.”

The pair still lives on their farm together – Ted is 93, Marguerite will be 90 in October. “We look after each other,” says Marguerite.