Robert “Bob” and Rita Schelble exchanged wedding vows 76 years ago, in September of 1948 in La Crosse.
Now 98 and 97, respectively, they’ve lived a full life together and currently reside in Sun Prairie.
Throughout their many years of marriage, the Schelbles have undoubtedly experienced the good and bad of life, but grounded in faith, Bob and Rita have taken seriously the indissolubility of the sacrament and have stood together, weathering it all.
The first date
Bob was the oldest of seven children in his family, Rita was the youngest of three, and they both had been raised in La Crosse.
It was the spring of 1947, and he and a friend were at a party, Bob began.
“I don’t think I’d been out of service more than a couple of months at the most,” he said, explaining how he’d returned home from enlistment with the Navy, following the conclusion of World War II and after being placed in inactive reserve.
“This one friend of mine, I was asking him — he seemed to know who was dating who and the whole bit — and I said, ‘I’m just out of service now, who would you suggest that I might be interested in dating?’”
His friend’s answer: Rita Costello.
But that answer was confusing at the time.
Bob explained that he knew Rita from high school; he had graduated two classes ahead of her at Aquinas High School in La Crosse.
More importantly, though, Bob also knew Rita had been seeing a good friend of his.
When Bob’s friend suggested giving Rita a call, Bob said, “Wait a minute, she’s been going out with Bill Stuber. I’m not about to get involved,” but “‘No,’ he says, ‘That’s no problem,’” Bob recalled his friend saying.
Bob said his friend “seemed to know how everything was falling in place” with Rita and Bill and said that, while they had been seeing each other for a few months, “There’s nothing. There’s nothing between them beyond just going out to parties and whatnot.”
Later, Bob decided to take his friend’s advice, and he chuckled, saying, “By the time I got through with the call, I thought I had a date, but I wasn’t at all positive.
“I don’t think Rita had the foggiest idea who I was,” Bob admitted, and said that “When I went to pick Rita up, the entire family was right there in the living room.”
In the room “was her dad and her mother and her two older sisters.
“In some respects, I was passing inspection, if you will,” Bob laughed.
Bob did pass the inspection and went out with Rita that night to a friend’s party.
“Anyway, that’s how it started,” Bob said, and the two were married in La Crosse a little more than a year later in 1948.
After marriage
In their first year of marriage, they welcomed a son, Robert, after moving to Milwaukee, and during the first 12 years of their marriage, Bob and Rita were blessed with three more boys: Tom, Mike, and Jim.
Starting out in Milwaukee, Bob worked for the city, helping manage street construction projects — Bob earned an engineering degree while in Navy officer training at Iowa State University.
Later, Bob moved the family to Fond du Lac, after accepting a job with Wisconsin Power & Light Co.
The family would settle there, and in 1955, Bob was honorably discharged from the Navy.
Remembering those years, Bob was very thankful Rita stayed at home with the children, although “it would have been easy for her to go out and get a job,” he said.
“She was home, she was right there, available whenever [the children] wanted or needed anything,” Bob explained, adding that “You aren’t going to have the amount of money that you’d have if both parents were working, I’ll grant you, but I think it’s by far and large the better thing to do to have a stay at home mom, where she is plain and simply in charge of that house.”
As they’ve aged, many things have changed for Bob and Rita.
Bob retired from Wisconsin Power & Light Co. after a 36-year career.
The Schelble’s four sons are married, and they’ve welcomed eight grandchildren into the family, seven of which are girls.
Sadly, Rita has developed dementia in her later years and lives in a full-time memory care facility.
Bob lives nearby in the adjacent senior community and visits her every day.
On Saturdays, after attending the Sunday anticipatory Mass at St. Albert the Great Church in Sun Prairie, part of Epiphany of the Lord Parish, Bob brings Rita the Eucharist.
After 76 years together, the Schelble’s are a testament to unconditional love and to the nuptial promise, “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life”.