I love the third week of September. It’s a moment to step back and reflect on one of my greatest personal achievements in life –
Becoming a trophy husband.
That’s right, this week, Anonymous and I celebrate four years of marriage bliss. After four years, four months, and four days of dating (crazy, isn’t it?) Anonymous and I got engaged, and almost a year later we got married.
Growing up, I never imagined that I would marry at 46. I couldn’t imagine what 46 looked like, let alone marrying someone at that age. But marrying later in life is becoming increasingly common in America. According to those who collect these stats, the share of women who get married after forty rose to 9% between 1990 (when I was a kid) and 2019 (when I was very much no longer one), while men’s share rose to 12% over the same span.
The median age for Americans who get married now is 30 for men and 28 for women. That is way up from 1960, when those numbers were 23 and 20.
Getting married later in life has a lot of advantages, like knowing ourselves and our careers, and having jobs we’ve built over decades. This also means stronger financial stability, which can be tough for those fools who fall in love younger. One obvious downside for older first-time married couples is that they tend not to have children, and we fall into that category. For me, there are more pluses than minuses for sure.
Four years is a timeframe we are used to, and it is a good time to pause and reflect. I’m very lucky to have Anonymous in my life as my wife and life partner. She is the greatest and I love her the most very much.
There is no doubt that Anonymous is blessed to be married to me. She is hitched to a guy with a great set of hair, piercing blue eyes, a ton of humility, and the world’s most mediocre US History blog. How could she not be happy? Four more years are on the table, and we plan on securing that every third week in September for years to come!
INSERT NONY PICTURES
Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.
1. President McKinley died on September 14, 1901. Eight days earlier, while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, an assassin’s bullet ripped through the 25th president’s abdomen. Unfortunately for him, the nearest hospital had no attending doctors, let alone a surgeon capable of the procedure. When one finally arrived, they were unable to remove the bullet, and the president succumbed to gangrene, which is a terrible way to die. McKinley, who was just a few months into his next “four more years,” would become the third president to be assassinated, after Lincoln and Garfield. Theodore Roosevelt, the vice president at the time, was doing his job and hiking some mountain, and became the youngest president at 42. When I turned 42, I had been dating Anonymous for about seven months.
2. The New York Daily Times published its first issue on September 18, 1851. Founded by Henry Raymond and George Jones, two guys who sounded like a country music duo but, in fact, had long careers in the newspaper industry, the Daily Times would eventually become The New York Times, one of the world’s largest and most influential publications. Anonymous has influenced me daily for years. She also doesn’t like country music very much, unless it’s Dolly Parton or Johnny Cash.
3. President George Washington delivered his farewell address on September 19, 1796. The first president did not actually speak to Congress or the American people. Instead, he delivered a long written essay that included a list of things to avoid, like political parties or long entanglements with foreign places. Since marrying Anonymous, I’ve hosted more parties and gotten more entangled in foreign countries. Not kidding, I have been to Paris, Lisbon, St. Martin, London, the Dominican Republic with Anonymous, and that’s just off the top of my head. We host a St. Patrick’s Day party, one on the Fourth of July, and host Sunday dinner on Father’s Day and Labor Day.
A quick update on the publications of essays. We are still plugging along with ranking the vice-presidents – It’s been a bit longer to pull things together – mostly because I have never heard of most of these guys. Also, my work schedule, along with our social and family obligations, has increased tenfold; then, on top of that, this past summer, I had a cyst ripped out of my mouth and lost Aunt Bea – life has been lifing.
I remain grateful for your continued support and patience as the pace of the essays isn’t quite as frequent as years past. You can catch up on what I have put together for the number two spot here.
Finally, Anonymous and I have an important social obligation this upcoming weekend – we are chairing our annual block party, which is on Saturday. That means another weekend without the VP rankings, because I finish them on Saturday morning. That also means I need every minute of Sunday to clean up and recover from a day that starts early and ends super late, so there will be no Maudy Monday Newsletter next week.
Again, sorry for that – but the block party is a great time. We are incredibly fortunate to live in such a wonderful place with wonderful neighbors – but it won’t afford me much time to knock out a proper essay.
Thanks for understanding and supporting Okay History. Have a great week!
Okay,
Chris
