PROVIDENCE — Joan Audette was a 21-year-old receptionist when Robert Audette, who was also 21 and just out of the military, met her at the reception desk.
Robert asked her on a date. Joan told him she was busy. He asked for her telephone number. She told him it was in the phone book.
Robert called the next day. They now have been married 65 years.
“I wanted to make sure he was serious,” Joan Audette, now 86, said after a Sept. 23 Mass at the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in Providence.
Robert and Joan Audette, parishioners of St. John Vianney Church in Cumberland, were one of 212 couples who were celebrating milestone wedding anniversaries, ranging from 25 years of marriage to 70 years.
“When you get married, it’s not about you. It’s all about us. You got to work together,” Joan Audette said in explaining the “secret” to a long and happy marriage.
Bishop Thomas J. Tobin celebrated Mass at the Wedding Anniversary Celebration, which included a renewal of wedding vows where each couple looked at each other and reaffirmed their love and commitment to one another, for good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death.
“I do,” the husbands and wives said unison as their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren looked on and took photos.
Bishop Tobin described the Wedding Anniversary Mass as “one of the great and beautiful and inspiring events in the life of our diocesan Church every year.”
“This is an important and joyful milestone in your lives together,” said Bishop Tobin, who thanked the married couples for their “witness to fidelity and love,” values that he said “are so important in our Church and in our world today.”
Bishop Tobin also told the couples that it was their vocation “to build a home where God lives.”
“That’s done by living your Catholic faith in all of its goodness and all of its richness,” Bishop Tobin said.
Joan Audette said she and her husband Robert always prayed together, even during life’s difficult times.
“It’s absolutely necessary,” said Joan, adding that she and Robert have five children, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Faith and prayer have also been an “essential” for Edward and Cookie Rodi, parishioners of Holy Apostles Church in Cranston who were celebrating 40 years of marriage.
Cookie said she met Edward while she was dating his friend.
“We broke up, and Ed took over,” said Cookie, who has a son and daughter with Ed.
“Having faith in God all our lives, sharing it with our children, means a lot to us,” said Cookie Rodi, who added that patience, not taking one another for granted and loving life were important ingredients for a happy marriage.
“And a lot of, ‘Yes, dear,’” Edward Rodi added.
