Marjorie and I dated for five years before we were able to be married. I was initially not a member of the Church. She gave me my first Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon is the reason that I'm a member of the Church. Marjorie was my missionary.

"Why don't you date a member boy?" Marjorie's mother asked.

"Because he's better than member boys," she answered.

Zelma apparently agreed, because she courted me. (See the article, Bread Baking, in this volume).

Inasmuch as I was not a member of the Church, Marjorie shouldn't have dated me, but I'm awfully glad that she did. She held fast to her values, which gave her the ability to give ready answers to two important questions that I later asked her.

Our first date was on 14 November 1964. I was baptized on 4 March 1967. I left to serve my time in the US Navy 13 days later. Because of the Navy, marriage wasn't even possible until I'd finished with my fourth duty station. While at my third duty station at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California I came home on leave, and it was then that I asked Marjorie to marry me. We were sitting on "the box" in her mother's kitchen. I mustered up the courage to ask, and to my amazement, without the least hesitation, she said, "Yes!"

I was amazed because I thought that the girl was always supposed to respond, "I'll have to think about it."

"You don't have to think about it first?"

"I've already thought about it."

I was elated. We got married when I came home on a two-week leave following my service in Japan. We then went to Morocco, North Africa where we spent a 15-month honeymoon in Kenitra.

Several years later found us at BYU where we lived and worked in the GRA Park which we managed while I attended the university. I was working out in the park when a question popped into my mind that needed to be answered right then. I left what I was doing and went to find Marjorie.

"Marjorie," I said, "if I hadn't joined the Church, would you have married me?"

"No," came the ready reply. Again, she didn't have to think about it.

Perfect, I thought. That's the answer I wanted to hear. My wife is a girl who would not have compromised her standards for anything or anyone.