A neverending love

MONROE — Two tenth graders sat beside each other during class in 1947. In June 2024, they will have been married for 73 years.
“I just fell in love with her right away,” Maurice Greiner said. “We were shy and five years later we got married.”
To this day Maurice and Zelma Greiner have never shared an official proposal.
“He never did propose,” Zelma Greiner said. “We were just together so long we started talking about our wedding and here we are.”
The Greiners are from a small town in a rural part of Saskatchewan, Canada. Without many schools past eighth grade, they were sent to a nearby high school with a college on campus for religious purposes.
On this campus, rules were strict for young couples dating.
“We couldn’t walk together alone,” Zelma Greiner said. “So I would write notes and I put them in his textbook because he always had homework. And then he would write notes and put them in my textbook. That’s how we would talk — read our notes.”
One of the few ways that Maurice and Zelma Greiner got around the rules was through sports — they played everything from tennis to badminton. Ice skating was a favorite activity of theirs to do together.
“You could only go around three times if you were ice skating.” Zelma Greiner said. “When we skated we could skate as a couple and that was the only time we could hold hands. We always took off our gloves no matter how cold it was.”
Their first kiss was a year after they met, in the eleventh grade. They were in the backseat of a taxi heading back to grade. They were in the backseat of a taxi heading back to school after coming home for Christmas when Maurice Greiner said he ‘stole a kiss.’
“I was excited,” Maurice Greiner said. “I had never kissed a girl before.”
They got married in 1951 and three years later they had a son and a newborn daughter to celebrate.
Now both 93 years old, the Greiners occasionally give teachings at their local church and Zelma Greiner has led classes on how to have a happy marriage — the class was called “Our Love Story.”
“We always remember that during the day if we ever disagree about something, we say we’re sorry,” Zelma Greiner said. “He’s the first one to say I’m sorry, even if it was my fault half the time.”
Maurice spent 14 years as a firefighter in Canada, even gaining a Queen’s Commendation for saving a life, before transitioning to working in life safety training and risk management. His line of work saw the family move to the U.S. in the 1970s and to Washington state in 1986.
During their 72 years of marriage, the couple found their home in Washington. They celebrate anniversaries and even birthdays with their great-grandchildren and each night without fail they pray together and say ‘I love you.’
“There’s never a day that goes by where we don’t kiss or say I love you,” Maurice Greiner said. “Those three words, we say them every night and we say them every morning.”