Burbank couple celebrates 75 years of marriage

Steve Marchese says he knows the secret to a long marriage. He’s stopped couples walking down the street and shared it with them, he said, and he’s used it himself.

Marchese might be onto something — the 96-year-old and his wife, Rose, 95, celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary on Monday. Friends sent cards calling the couple an inspiration.

PHOTOS: Burbank couple celebrates 75 years of marriage

“People always tell me, ‘What’s the secret?’,” he said in an interview this week at the Burbank home, where the couple has lived for 55 years. “It’s holding hands.”

It could be a little more than that. Rose Marchese said her husband also “keeps me in flowers.”

He brings her a bouquet about once a week when he returns from the market, a 12-minute trip on his two-seat electric scooter. The seats are side-by-side so the couple can hold hands when they ride together, such as when they go to Hill Street Cafe for lunch, though Rose Marchese said she doesn’t like the attention they get when they do.

That’s the thing about Steve and Rose Marchese. She’s a quiet, bookworm type, she said, showing off a bag of books delivered recently by a volunteer from the Burbank Library. Steve Marchese is outgoing and a bit of a ham.

One time, for example, “we’re on a cruise not two minutes and he’s on stage,” his wife recalled. He’d been called up for a bit by the ship’s performer, but stole the spotlight when he told a joke about a stuttering Bible salesman.

It earned a standing ovation and was so popular that he was invited back to tell the joke for the second dinner seating. When the lights came up, he said, he saw the ship’s captain and crew had turned up to see him. From then on, everyone on the ship knew his name, he said.

It seems it’s always been that way. Steve Marchese said as a teenager he used to showboat, riding his bike in front of his future wife’s family home in Batavia, N.Y., trying to get her attention. They were neighbors and he knew then that she was the woman for him, but she was shy, so he became friends with her younger sister in order to get close to her.

They had to wait to marry until Steve Marchese turned 21 and no longer needed permission from his parents. He was the only family member with a job and they were reluctant to let him marry and lose the income, his wife explained. Just days after his birthday, on June 15, 1940, they wed.

They honeymooned in New York City. Enlarged photos on the wall of their garage show them standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, which had been completed less than a decade earlier.

In 1959, they moved from New York to Burbank. Rose Marchese said she fell in love instantly with California, which reminds her of her native Palermo, Italy, where she lived until she was 9 years old.

Steve Marchese worked a variety of jobs, retiring from American Savings Bank as superintendent of maintenance after 15 years in 1981. His paycheck put food on the table, Rose Marchese said, but the salary she made as an electrical assembler at Lockheed and Pacific Airmotive paid for luxuries like trips to Europe and cruises.

The Marcheses have four children — Rosalie, Carole, Stephen and David — six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

These days they don’t take many cruises and are “just taking it easy,” Steve Marchese said. They play several games of cards — Skip-Bo and Kings in the Corner — to keep their minds sharp.

“And I always beat him,” Rose Marchese added.

Like all couples, they’ve had their arguments, she said, but they never go to bed angry. Her husband said they even fall asleep holding hands.

“That’s love,” he added.

“We’ve been in love since we were kids,” Rose Marchese said. “We’re still holding hands.”