My husband and I have just celebrated 31 years together, 25 of them legal! Yes, that means that we just had our 25th wedding anniversary. We got to spend it in New Orleans with all kinds of food, ghost, voodoo, music, and fun. It was a wonderful time. I felt so fortunate that we got to spend it together, just the two of us. It had been several years since one or the other of us were sick and could not enjoy each other on our anniversary for one reason or another. This year was truly a blessing.

I started thinking back about how far we’ve come. I first met my husband in medical school. How he first drew my attention was the fact that he was literally the guy that laughed 30 seconds longer than anyone else in the entire lecture auditorium, loudly and with vigor. To the point that you were kind of shrinking down in your seat and hunching your shoulder with embarrassment, even though you weren’t the one doing the laughing…Oh lord. He also wore leisure suites fresh out the 70s every single day to school. Um what?! I gotta say, that was unique if nothing else.

So, we weren’t actually friends or hung out in any way and then one day, he invites himself to a concert with me and a friend of mine. I am ashamed to say that we actually refused to pick him up at his apartment because he lived in a part of Detroit that we were scared of at at the time (this was back in the 90s, not Detroit as we know it now). Well, he was un-fased and actually drove an hour way to meet us up at a dance club in his broke-ass, bungie cord hatchback attached Sunbird SE to meet us! We ended up dancing the night away. He had the whole club heying and hoing in a matter of 20 minutes! He complimented my absolutely horrible outfit…with sincerity! We ended up going back to my house together and he looked with rapt attention at my ridiculous post card collection and ate my parents terrible food and we talked til dawn, just like a movie. Honest to gosh.

Now, here we are 31 years later. Still happy and thriving. We have mounted the sometimes un-seemingly recoverable obstacles and tragedies and kept on going. We are both independent physicians and take care of people of all ages every day. We laugh until we almost pee our pants. We like the same ridiculous jokes. We watch chick flicks together. We are parents to three beautiful girls, who feel more like 6 any given day. I’m telling ya, we got it going on. You just never know what joy you could end up with if you give things a chance.

Dr. Katz