A Monday Wedding

They were a handsome couple—the bride, dark eyed and vivacious, the groom tall, with Irish blue eyes and wavy dark hair. Their wedding day, February 9, 1948, was a clear Monday morning. The father of the bride had not wanted to close his beauty salon on a Saturday when they were at their busiest. He hadn't closed his barber shop for his own wedding for the same reason.   

Nonetheless he and his wife hosted a small breakfast for the bridal party and family at a fine local restaurant before the ceremony at the Immaculate Conception church and a reception for 150 at their home that afternoon. The bride's closest friends, girls she had known for years, helped her mother with the festivities. 

As the Butte Daily Post reported, "Given in marriage by her father, the bride wore a stunning gabardine suit in sun gold with accessories in acorn. Her corsage was of yellow roses." She is not smiling in her photo in front of her parent's home that day. She was not unhappy, she simply never smiled in photographs..

He was five years older than she, so the couple had not known each other in school. But their respective brothers had gone to Boys Central, the Catholic High School, together. The groom would often tell the story of their meeting at local bar where the bride was sitting with her brother.  

"Tom, who’s that pretty girl you're with?"

"Hey Jim, that's no girl, that's my sister Mary Kay."

World War II had ended not three full years before and all around the country in cities like Butte, Montana, young couples were ready to marry and begin families without the dark shadow of war. Young men like Jim, who had served for three years as a Lieutenant JG with the Navy in the Pacific Theater. Young women like Mary Kay who had gone to cosmetology school to please her father, then on to work in his business, dancing with lonesome servicemen at the local USO on weekends. 

Now Jim had a good job working as an engineer in the oil fields on the High Line in Northern Montana. He could support a wife and Mary Kay's warmth and lively personality would be a welcome change from his bachelor existence. For Mary Kay, it was the opportunity to escape her demanding father, the beauty shop, and the work she had never loved. While she would miss Butte and her friends, it was time to take a chance on a new life in a new place with her new husband. 

After a brief honeymoon in Salt Lake City, the couple arrived in Shelby, Montana, crossing the threshold of their new home on Valentine's Day.