This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people. And we love

to hear listeners stories. Share them with us at Our American Stories.com. Your stories are some of the

best we do here on this show. And today we bring you the story of Tom Ryan, a 95-year-old listener

of our show in Los Angeles.

Tom had an unusual upbringing.

He grew up in Long Island, New York, living behind a funeral parlor run by his family.

And he wrote a book about it entitled Love in the Ashes.

Today, he brings us a story you're going to have to hear to believe. It's all about

love, old-fashioned values, and, well, breaking the law. Here's Tom. I slipped the ring on her finger,

said I do, and thought it was forever. Boy, was I wrong. So I've joined the shuffling line

of millions of lonely people wondering where it all went wrong. What do you do with 15 years

of memories?

It is reassuring, however, to know that there are couples who make it through 40 or 50 years of marriage.

Of course, they are usually as astonished as anyone else that they made it, That looked a surprise in their newspaper anniversary

pictures isn't an accident.

I even know of a couple who made it that long

without being married.

It started in those lean depression days of the late 30s, in my small New England hometown, where any woman who dyed her hair or plucked her eyebrows was snicketedat, and divorce was something for movie stars.

Dr. Joe was the town doctor,

...