HOBART, Wis. — Ted and Rosemary Prosser have known each other since childhood, but like many great love stories, theirs began with a small misunderstanding.
“I said to his friend, ‘Tell Ted Prosser I would go to the military ball with him,’” Rosemary recalled, seated beside her husband of 75 years at their kitchen table. “But he never called me.”
It’s a point of friendly debate even 70-some years later.
“I don’t think he ever told me,” Rosemary said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me why you wouldn’t take me to the military ball?”
Ted paused. “I don’t know,” he said.
Eventually, Ted did call.
The couple married in October 1948. They raised 10 kids in the home Ted Prosser built with his own hands.
Eight of their children are still living.
“We’ve got one in there now, painting,” Ted Prosser said with a nod down the hallway. “She worked with me for a long time.”
Ted Prosser ran a construction company for decades. He now spends his time in the workshop out back. He cuts wood, crafts pieces and tends to his carefully curated collection of elephant figurines.
“I was just kind of fascinated by them,” he said.
Dozens of them, lined up, organized, and loved — just like everything else in the home he built.
As for their secret to a long-lasting marriage?
“We were a busy family,” said Rosemary Prosser. “We weren’t the kind to go sit at the bar half the night or anything like that.”
“No. We never did that,” Ted Prosser agreed, shaking his head.
Now both 95, the couple was recognized by the Wisconsin Family Council as one of the state’s longest-married couples. But Ted and Rosemary Prosser don’t see themselves as extraordinary.
“We’re just plain people,” Rosemary Prosser said. “Maybe that’s why it went so long. Maybe we were just ordinary people.”
“Too busy to die,” Ted Prosser added with a grin.
