Don and Gerry McClure celebrate 70 years together

He put a ring on her finger the night she graduated from high school seven decades ago, and the love was still palpable between them Saturday as Don and Gerry McClure celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.

Friends and family came from as far away as Florida to the McClure Ranch north of Nespelem, where the two have made their home on the acreage homesteaded by Don's father and grandfather in 1918.

"Lightning stuck," Gerry McClure said about Don's proposal that came just three days after she'd told another fellow she wasn't interested in settling down yet.

The first year they were married, Don said, their total income was about $1,300, earned mostly by selling the cream they separated after milking their cows.

They lived for two years in an old 12- by-20-foot bunkhouse on the ranch with only a cook stove for heat and no indoor plumbing.

"We knew how to keep warm when it was 20 below zero," Don said wryly. "We found out real quick."

The gathering took place in and around the couple's home, with a cake cutting, speeches and poetry (a family trait) read in the shade of a giant blue spruce Don tore from the homestead ground and transplanted when it was five feet tall.

Eyes were misty when sons and daughters read poetry that cut to the heart of the cowboy values instilled by their parents, none more moist than Don's as he repeatedly recalled the vision of his bride, still how he sees her: "I didn't have to go to Hollywood to find my Marylin Monroe; she was right here," he said.