Today my wife Alice and I have been married forty-three years. We greeted each other with a hug this morning, as is our wont. After we wished each other a happy anniversary, Alice leaned her head toward mine and said, “Nevertheless, we persisted.”

And in fact, my friends, that’s what she said.

So tonight I salute our persistence, and I publicly state, not for the first time and not for the last either, that I am a very, very lucky man indeed.

Pictured below is a scene from early in our marriage in which Alice’s loving gaze carries just a hint, just a casual warning, of the exasperation I was no doubt busily eliciting at that very moment.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for whatever I was doing, or about to do, in the moment pictured above. Still, she is adorable, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

Here’s another photo from our salad days, when we were about to make the second big move of our young lives: from Charlottesville and graduate school (and the dissertation I had become expert at not writing) to Chapel Hill, NC and Alice’s dazzling one-year-and-a-summer progress through a two-year Masters of Library Science degree program.

And here, earliest of all, is Alice holding a cake made for her bridal shower. The cake reads “Three Cheers for Alice and Gardner.”

Today, it’s forty-three cheers for us. A cheer for each year.

And here’s to many more.

It takes some gumption to share a life for a long time–or at all, for that matter.

Nevertheless, we persisted.

And I hereby declare: Gardner loves Alice. Still, and always.

Happy anniversary!