While it wasn’t a romance 80 years in the making, a marriage that took place when both the bride and groom were in their 80’s has been immortalized in a play penned by the bride’s daughter.
Connie Massing’s newest play, inspired by the life of her mother Viola Massing-Ogilvie, now 91 years old, and her two husbands, is running at Edmonton’s La Cité Francophone from March 28 to April 13.
Massing-Ogilvie grew up just south of Crestomere, while Ed Massing lived in the Ferrybank area and Alex Ogilvie grew up west of Crestomere.
Although Massing-Ogilvie didn’t attend school with either of the men, she knew them from different functions and country dances. ‘We grew up on the same territory.” Viola Massing-Ogilvie said in an interview.
In the course of 1940, Massing-Ogilvie and Ogilvie played opposite parts in the play The Wild Oats Boy and they dated a few times.
Although he wasn’t in the play with them, Massing was also an acquaintance of Ogilvie. Massing-Ogilvie also went out with Massing a few times before he left for Navy training.
A few months before he left, Massing sold his little roadster with the rumble seat to Ogilvie because he’d no longer need it. “He used to say ‘I got the girl and you got the car’,” said Massing-Ogilvie.
In the play, though, Massing is just returning from the Navy rather than heading out.
Alex Ogilvie married another girl in a small ceremony in 1941 and Massing-Ogilvie and Massing wed during the summer of 1943. “Alex soon decided I had made up my mind about Ed, but I hadn’t.” said Viola.
Before their marriage, after Massing came back from Navy training, he proposed to Massing-Ogilvie with a diamond ring but she hadn’t made up her mind about him yet, and she ended up returning it. Later he came back with the same question and a watch; she said yes.
“I just wasn’t sure I loved Ed enough to move that far away,” Massing-Ogilvie explained. Soon after their wedding, the young couple made their home in Nova Scotia, then Newfound Land, due to his Navy career.
Looking back Massing-Ogilvie doesn’t know how she managed and says for most of her life, she’s never spent longer than 10 days away from home here in Ponoka.
By the time Massing left for Navy training, he and Massing-Ogilvie had only gone out a few times, they began corresponding more through letters when he was away. “I think my brother wrote to him and I added a few words.”
Massing-Ogilvie remembers he once returned to the Crestomere area during his training and showed up at a lunch social intoxicated and prepared to leave her behind. “He thought he was done with me because he was going away.”
Looking back with a smile, Massing-Ogilvie is glad a teacher bought her pie that day rather than him.
Soon after arriving in Nova Scotia Massing-Ogilvie became pregnant with her first child and at seven months, she came back to Alberta and stayed with her parents for a year to make raising the baby easier.
On their summer wedding day it rained from 4 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. the next evening. “It was quite a thing. People were watching the hail more than the wedding.”
After the Second World War ended, Massing-Ogilvie and her husband returned to the Ponoka area, settling a few miles west of the Matejka Road area.
Massing-Ogilvie and Massing were married 52 years, in which time their paths with Ogilvie and his wife barely crossed. “We got our golden wedding (50th anniversary) but by that time he wasn’t doing too well.
After her husband’s death, Massing-Ogilvie spent the next five years a widow before running into Ogilvie in the aisles of Ponoka’s Co-op grocery store; her and her friend were on their way back from Lacombe. “Alex joined us in the café.”
He eventually asked her to join him for dinner but Massing-Ogilvie refused after seeing him in a car with somebody else. “I thought oh I don’t want to get mixed up in that, so I said no thanks I’ve already had my supper.”
After many friends and family members chastised her decision, saying they wouldn’t turned him down and even she should have married him in the first place, Massing-Ogilvie yielded.
Both Massing-Ogilvie and Ogilvie were living a few blocks from each other on Riverside. They sold their houses at the same time and bought another just south of the Aquaplex.
“Some people always wonder why you’d get married at that age,” said Massing-Ogilvie.
She despises the term “shacking up” and felt it would be better if they were married rather than just living together.
Although it’s exaggerated in the play to the point that the wedding was almost called off, Massing-Ogilvie says it’s true that Ogilvie had a terrible cold the day of their wedding that he should have been trying to beat a week before rather than the day of.
With this marriage, there was also no proposal, ring, watch or otherwise. Instead the two of them discussed and decided that was the course of action they wanted. “It’s a little different than when you’re younger.”
After her husband passed away in the spring of 2008, Massing-Ogilvie now splits her time between her Rimoka Housing Foundation apartment in Ponoka and living alone in her house by the Aquaplex.