‘From the Ashes’: Couple remarries after 30 years

By Josh Eiserike

Published: July 6, 2008

Susan Bodnar's parents Wanda and Ted Conner first married in August 1945. They were married about 30 years, divorced and just last month—after 30 years apart—remarried in Susan's backyard.

"My mom said 'Our first wedding wasn't like this,' and I said 'Well, that's because I wasn't there'," Susan said.

Their second wedding was on Susan's deck overlooking a wooded backyard in Montclair. Since both Ted, 82, and Wanda, 81, have trouble standing, they sat through the ceremony, kissing every time a bell rang. About 20 people, family members and neighbors, attended. The white wedding arch was decorated with hydrangeas and gladiolas.

All of their children, four of their five grandchildren and great-grandchild attended the wedding. The photograph of the couple cutting the cake in 1945 was drawn into the icing of their most recent wedding cake.

"She did a bang up job," Wanda said. "Our original wedding wasn't nearly as fancy."

Wanda and Ted Conner grew up seven miles apart in Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh.

"Our families were always getting together from the time we were young snots," Ted Conner said.

Romance was "kind of expected," Ted said. His mother used to point out how Wanda would stare at him. They became a couple, took bike rides together. They married in August 1945. He was 19, she was 18, both barely out of high school. There were about 100 people packed into their church for what Ted said was a "traditional and beautiful" wedding.

Ted got a job as a disc jockey. He worked for various Pennsylvania and Ohio radio stations as an on-air host, interviewing jazz greats like Benny Goodman, Charlie Spivak and Spike Jones. Wanda stayed home, raising the couple's three children, Judy, Lee and Susan.

"I messed up," Ted said. "I saw somebody I thought was attractive, and I was attracted to her, and I left the marriage. It was bad news."

They had been married 30 years.

Wanda said the divorce was hard on her. She took a job as a representative for a greeting card company, then as a cashier at the Penn-Ohio Truck Plaza. She traveled a lot with her son, to places like China and Alaska. She didn't speak to Ted for about three decades.

Ted said he missed out on really good stuff that made him "sad," like his grandchildren's graduations. He was married to three other women in those years.

Wanda never remarried.

"I was too busy, working," Wanda said.

"She was the smarter of the two," Ted said. "I'm sure there were opportunities."

On the morning of what would have been his 60th anniversary with Wanda, Ted's wife Rosalie suggested he give Wanda a call.

"(Wanda) said to me 'I wondered, when you got up this morning, if you'd remember'," Ted said. They were interested in what had happened to the other over the years. Ted, Rosalie and Wanda got to be friends over the phone.

Rosalie died from complications of diabetes last July. Although she never met Wanda, Susan said the two women would have liked each other.

Their children wanted Wanda and Ted to sell their houses and move to Virginia so they could take care of them. By this time Ted and Wanda were speaking on the phone two to three hours a night.

Instead, they moved in together in December in Boardman, Ohio, about six hours from Montclair.

"We thought we lived together for 30 years, maybe we could do it," Wanda said. "As soon as we started living together it seemed like time had rolled back. We say it's like the mythological phoenix, rising from the ashes, rekindling our love."

She also forgave Ted.

"We just forget," Wanda said. "The past is gone. We're here now. We try not to bring that up. … We remind each other that was a long time ago."

No second honeymoon is planned. The newlyweds are taking it one day at a time.

Staff writer Josh Eiserike can be reached at 703-878-8072.