Bob and Woodie Merchant mark 60 years together

The longest ever marriage reportedly lasted 86 years, while the longest living married couple marked their 79 anniversary last February.
Woodie and Bob Merchant of Saline are gaining on the latter record, marking 60 happy years together on June 12.
At the heart of their marital longevity, according to Bob, is never having a fight. Woodie attributes the success of their relationship to Bob, “the sweetest man in the world.” They can’t give each other enough credit for the happiness they have shared.
“We brought each other up,” she declares.
Over a recent cup of coffee at the Merchant residence off Whitlock Street, Woodie reflected on six decades with Bob, remembering their 1943 wedding day in Yale, how she felt, what she wore, and other fragments of the past that remain fresh in her memory.
Take the Daniel Green slippers, for example. The war years meant shortages and sacrifices. Instead of shoes, Woodie wore white satin Daniel Green slippers with a pink satin lining.
“They were lovely,” she said.
That day, said Woodie, she remembers greeting her guests, cutting the cake, and talking with friends. But underneath the trappings of the wedding and reception was a sense of excitement.
“I was really excited that day because I was going to be with Bob forever,” she said.
The Merchants met while students at Michigan State in 1940. Woodie, from Yale, in the Thumb, was studying music while Bob, a Detroit native, was in the agriculture program. A city boy, Bob and his father were unlikely partners in the farming biz, which is how he and Woodie settled in Saline. Their first home was on 190 acres off Maple Road.
Woodie went from the college classroom to the role of farmer’s wife, and Bob went from college to the cultivator.
“We’ve had lots of adventures in this little community,” she said. “We really had a wonderful time with the farm, and we did a lot of traveling and camping with our kids.”
The Merchants have become a Saline legend of sorts in their 60 years in town. Woodie taught scores of Saline children how to play the piano as well as giving them an appreciation for music that they would carry into adulthood. She worked at Storybook Gardens, a preschool operated by Jackie Tull, and she volunteered in many organizations, including the Saline Community Hospital Foundation Board, the Foundation for Saline Area Schools, and a host of others. Woodie also served on the Saline Board of Education for several years, and has written a regular column for The Saline Reporter, “Welcome to the Neighborhood.”
Bob, a farmer for many years, as well as a businessman, has worked as a real estate agent, a job he still does today, and is active in the Saline Rotary Club.
Helping keep their marriage on an even keel is their belief that even married folk need some time away from each other. Bob typically goes to “deer camp” in November, and to the “island” in June.
Bob’s health hasn’t been the best in recent weeks, and he spent a few days at Saline Hospital.
“I asked him if he still planned on going to the island,” Woodie commented. “He said, ‘Hell, yes, I’m going!’
“He’s worked really hard to get himself well, and I’m glad because he needed to go, and to know that he could do that. It really was wonderful.”
She knew she didn’t have to worry since middle son Jim Merchant would be going along with the rest of the male members of the family, and Woodie knew the son would look out for the father.
Jim, she said, “mollycoddles us.” She explained that he considered having his octogenarian parents to move in with him. But Woodie knows that she and Bob are doing just fine in their Whitlock Street home.
Their life together is so intertwined that Woodie doubts she has much to worry about if she does end up a widow.
“I’m not afraid to live alone,” she said. “I wouldn’t be living that much longer anyway.”
Neither Woodie nor Bob show any signs of slowing down. But life now is different from the way it used to be.
“There are things that you don’t understand, but there are good things, too,” she said.
Like the friends and family that have been the focal point of their marriage.
“I loved raising a family and sometimes, I get lonely for my children—not as they are now, but as they were when they were little.”
Most of those friends and family have been witness to the success of the Merchants’ 60-year-old union, celebrating birthdays and holidays together, mourning at their side when son Rob died of cancer in 1998, right around this time of year.
Two days after their wedding anniversary, Bob will turn 83, and no doubt there will be some kind of celebration with friends and/or family, just as there likely will be for a 60th anniversary.
Woodie said recently that she expected to celebrate the milestone quietly with family and without the fuss and fanfare each planned for the other on their respective 80th birthdays.
As she said shortly before reaching her eighth decade,
“This isn’t (our) world anymore and my kids are going to have to get used to that. You reach an age where you realize that this isn’t your world anymore, that you’re passing this world on.”