This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

After 64 Years Together, Rye Couple Understands True Meaning of Valentine's Day

Long-time Rye residents John and Dorothy Carolin may be one of the city's longest married couples.

If asked, Dorothy Carolin will tell you about how she and her husband, John, likely came to be one of Rye’s longest married couples.

The Carolins, who have been married 64 years, probably understand better than most the meaning of Valentine’s Day.

“We met during a social event at the old Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City after World War II,” Dorothy recalled. “There used to be dances there, and the Armory had a good restaurant, and John and his wartime buddies used to go there a lot.”

Find out what's happening in Ryewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Dorothy, who then worked in sales and market research, was there as someone else’s date. So was John. But the two had  natural chemistry. Dating led to love and marriage, and love and marriage led to a baby carriage and six children now ranging in age from 50 to 63 (with one deceased).

Dorothy and John, now 90 and 95, respectively, have a lot to look back on, including more than 60 years spent in Rye where they recently celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary on Jan. 25.

Find out what's happening in Ryewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We started out in Manhattan, moved to Rye in the early 1950s—1951 I think it was—to Meadow Place when we were expecting our second child and John had just been promoted to run a department store in White Plains,” she said.

The Carolins thought they were going to rent, but the owner decided at the last moment he wanted to sell “and somehow we scraped together the $14,5000 we needed to buy that lovely small first house,” Dorothy remembered, with John letting her do the talking “because she’s better at that than I am.”

“We loved everything about Rye, it was a sweet, unpretentious, friendly, homey wonderful place back then, [it] still is now but somehow it is not quite the same,” she said. “The kids loved growing up on that dead end street with lots of other kids and friendly neighbors.”

And when the family started expanding, Dorothy and John moved to a bigger house on Locust Avenue and the Carolins began to play an increasingly bigger role in Rye.

John became more involved at Rye’s Church of the Resurrection, with the American Legion (he saw action in North Africa and Europe during World War II and came out of the military as an Army captain) and at the Rye Golf Club, where he is still actively campaigning for reduced rates for seniors.

He also was elected to the City Council, headed the Planning Committee and was Chairman of the Board of the old St. Agnes Hospital, among other things. He is still tall, distinguished-looking, stands ramrod straight, has a full head of white hair and speaks clearly and authoritatively, with a precision honed under the Jesuits at Loyola Preparatory School and Fordham University.

Dorothy is still a small, wiry firebrand who became involved in various causes in Rye: everything from the anti-war movement to ban-the-bomb marches to representing Wainwright House in peace talks at the United Nations. As a stay-at-home mother, she still found time to take night marketing courses at New York University and Pace University while spending lots of quality time with her children.

Which leads up to her “Valentine” moment, Val (short for Valentine) being the youngest of the Carolin children: Cathy, Guy, Beth, Chris and Jeffrey.

“I was one of the few women in Rye who came out to march in support of Martin Luther King after his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” she said. “We marched from the railroad station to Purchase Street to City Hall. And Val wanted to march with us. He was like maybe 7, and I told him he should wait until he was older to make decisions like that.” Though Val initially complied, just before the march began, he came running up to his mother and said that he wanted to march just like she would be.

“I can still see him running up to me, out of breath and hear him saying that,” Dorothy said.

John and Dorothy tried moving away from Rye after the children grew up and moved out, so they sold the Locust Avenue house and moved to a condo in Greenwich. But it wasn’t the same, Dorothy said, so they moved back to Rye and a co-op in Blind Brook Lodge several years ago.

John is close enough to Resurrection so he can walk to daily Mass and lector, take longer walks to the Rye Free Reading Room and Rye Town Park, and golf at the Rye Golf Club.

Dorothy has become active in the Westchester Contemplative Prayer movement, and uses her marketing research skills to do studies for Resurrection. She also regularly walks from Blind Brook to Playland in all kinds of weather and loves the Boardwalk, Oakland Beach and Long Island Sound.

Asked the secret to the longevity of their marriage, Dorothy reflected for a long moment and then said: “Seeing marriage as an adventure where two people really get to know one another as they live together and start a family. And once there is a family, the marriage takes on an entirely different dimension and there is a very different kind of bonding that comes from shared experience. And those experiences keep the adventure going.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?