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Bob and Joanne Wood
Who: Bob Wood, 54, retired RCMP officer, Joanne Wood, 57, high-school teacher
Relationship status: Married since 1986
Location: Langly, B.C.
Cookie cutter romance
Bob: We met in 1984. I was a student at University of Alberta. Every day I took the bus from west Edmonton to the U of A campus.
Joanne: I was on the same bus route. I had noticed Bob and thought he was quite a cute hunk, but I was too shy to say anything. I thought he was Australian.
Bob: And then one day I’m just sitting there on the bus at 8:30 AM and this woman drops a batch of chocolate chip cookies in my lap. I thought she looked like a Chanel model.
Joanne: I wasn’t sure if I’d have the guts to even give them to him, but I did.
Bob: Her exact words were, “I hope I’m not being too forward, but I baked you some cookies.” And then she walked away and I thought maybe it was my buddies playing a trick on me. It took a few beats. And then I caught up with her and asked if I could take her for an orange juice.
A bookcase built for two
Joanne: We used to have this joke about when we would “share bookcases,” which was our euphemism for if we ever got married, had kids.
Bob: For us, it meant the future. We had a lot of books back then. The kids of today might say, “Do you want to share digital space?” After we had been dating for a bit, I got a call to join the RCMP, which was my life dream. I dropped out of my masters program and went off to Regina. Joanne stayed back to finish school, but we got engaged before I left.
Joanne: We went to the mall to together to get the ring. We picked it out together. It was $240.
Bob: It was $243. We were counting out pennies back then. I don’t think I’d ever given anyone that much money for anything.
Joanne: On our 25th anniversary we added two diamonds and had it welded together.
Simple pleasures
Joanne: I know there are women who have a thing for Mounties or men in uniform. That wasn’t necessarily me. Our first post was very isolating. It was a small town and we were from a city and people weren’t very friendly. But we were lucky after that with where we were living.
Bob: I guess you could say things just worked out. And here we are all these years later, we are celebrating 32 years on Aug. 22. We’ll probably go out for dinner or do something simple. We’re not parachutists.
Joanne: Sometimes I’ll make cookies for the anniversary. He’s also partial to my coconut cream pie.