When Mary Lou and John Riley first met in 1958, it wasn't exactly love at first sight.
"I thought he was grouchy," Mary Lou Riley said. "He thought I was a snob."
"A skinny snob," John Riley added.
But when he returned from Army service two and a half years later, at 22, he had changed — or rather, the Army had changed him. As his wife now says it, "Service snuck some sense" into him. His sister was his future wife's friend at business school. When he returned from service in the summer of 1962, the three, plus a cousin, went to a dance hall called Moseley's just outside Boston.
"I met some other guy and danced with him all night," Mary Lou Riley remembered. But the young soldier was smitten, and he dropped off his cousin and his sister at his own house so he could drive her home alone. When they arrived at her parents' house, he asked if she'd like to go on a date — and she began to laugh.
"Here you ask somebody out and what does she do but laugh," he said. Still, she accepted.
Early the next year, he was offered a job with the CIA as an accountant and moved to Northern Virginia. When she came to visit, she stayed with his female boss and her husband and John Riley was allowed to take her out until 10 p.m. before returning her to their care.
They quickly realized the long-distance thing wasn't going to work. The two married in Boston on Sept. 21, 1963. Both were born in 1940, but from the beginning, people wondered about the "old guy" they saw her with — thanks to an early influx of salt-and-pepper hair.
Forty-one years, four children and many homes in many countries around the world — thanks to his CIA job — later, the Rileys are still going strong. They moved to Leisure World in 2000. In the upcoming months, they will visit a daughter in Dallas, vacation in Hawaii and Tahoe and go to a granchild's graduation in Indiana.
The two credit the longevity of their marriage to their similar backgrounds — both have strong New England accents and were raised Catholic. The years they spent living abroad also pulled them together because they had no one else to depend on.
"She's my best friend," he said. "I think that's the most important part. And I'm her best friend."