Dancing is a key factor in a local couple’s seven-decades-long marriage.
“We’ve danced every Saturday night for all these years,” said Audrey Crane, 90.
“If we weren’t in the hospital having babies or sick with the flu … we danced every Saturday night for years and years.”
Audrey and Alfred, who celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on June 29, go to the Waterdown Legion every Thursday to listen to music.
Alfred, 93, isn’t dancing anymore, but Audrey said she still gets up and does a few rounds each week.
That’s how their relationship began.
They met at a dance at the Aberfoyle mill and at the time Audrey was dating the brother of the woman Alfred was dating. Though they hadn’t met before then, Alfred, who lived on the west side of what is now Guelph-Eramosa Township, knew more of Audrey’s extended family than she did.
They also went to a dance on one of their first dates.
“We were standing there and I can’t even tell you who it was that said it now, I can’t remember but somebody says … ‘I’m going to get [Alfred] to take me home,’” Audrey said.
“And I said, ‘well I bet you a quarter you don’t.’ And I kept the quarter too. I should have framed it … because quarters were worth a lot more then in those days.”
Alfred also knew early on that Audrey was the one for him.
Audrey said she was told Alfred was walking down a street in Guelph and “told somebody, ‘there’s the girl I’m going to marry’ (in reference to Audrey). Now whether it’s true or not I don’t know, but he did.
“[He’s] a country guy and I was a church organist. So that’s a great combination isn’t it?”
And they made it work.
They were together for about a year before they were married, but neither one remembers how they made the decision.
“I don’t know, I think we just took if for granted that that’s what it was going to be,” Audrey said.
The couple was to be married at Audrey’s church with a reception at her home. However, two weeks before the date, Audrey ended up in the hospital.
She had fallen at the skating rink and thought the pain she was feeling in her back was from the fall, but when the chiropractor arrived he told her she needed a doctor.
“So the doctor came and that’s when he found out I had strep throat and diphtheria – it wasn’t my back at all,” she said.
“So when the doctor came they took me from the ambulance to [St. Joseph’s hospital] and I was only there one day and they took me from the ambulance to the [Guelph General Hospital] and that’s where I stayed.”
She was in the isolation ward for a week.
“I’d lost about 60 pounds but I was fine,” Audrey said. “If they wouldn’t let any visitors come in [Alfred] used to sit outside on the veranda and talk to me through the window,” she said with a laugh.
She was released a week later, on June 22, 1946, the day her wedding was scheduled to take place. She was the last patient to ever stay in the isolation ward at the Guelph General Hospital.
The couple called everyone who was attending the wedding and told them it was rescheduled for the following Saturday.
It never crossed Audrey’s mind to post-pone it until she had recovered further.
“I wasn’t going to let him get away,” she said. “No, we had everything.”
She altered her dress in the week and the couple was married on June 29, 1946.
“My dad says, ‘do you think you’re going to be able to walk up that aisle?’ And I said … I’m going to walk up if I have to crawl,’” Audrey said. “And halfway up my veil caught on you know those old floor registers, somebody grabbed my veil and pulled it up.”
The couple honeymooned in Port Albert, Ontario and one of the highlights they remember is a street dance in Dungannon.
After living in a couple Guelph apartments the newlyweds built a house on Hayes Avenue in Guelph on property they bought for $9.80.
In 1954 they moved to an old farmhouse on Marden Road near Wellington Road 86 in what is now Guelph-Eramosa Township.
“We traced it back 117 years,” Audrey said. “It was the old cider mill property on Marden Road.”
They build a new house on the property in 1991 that has since been sold. Now Audrey and Alfred’s granddaughter lives in the original house and their son, Robert Crane, built another house on the property in 1986 that he still lives in today.
The couple has four children, 13 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren with two more on the way this year.
Through it all, dancing has always been a constant.
“We were 25 years married and [Alfred] said, ‘what do you want for your anniversary?’ And I said, ‘I want you to learn to waltz.‘” Audrey said.
“So then I had to learn to … square dance.”
After over 70 years together, the couple’s connection seems to transcend normal communication methods.
Sitting in their Guelph condo, Audrey and Alfred reminisced about their numerous trips and when asked if they danced while away Audrey said, “Sure. Everywhere there was a dance.”
Then without mentioning a date, location or trip destination she asked, “Where was that place we went, stopped and went into that dance that night coming home?” Without missing a beat, Alfred answered simply, “Warren.”
Audrey said she can read Alfred’s mind, but it seems like the skill is mutual.
