“Today is the same as forever,” says Erwin Miller. Married to his wife, Neva Miller for almost 69 years, he looks at her with a smile as he shares the story of how they first met before they moved to Saskatchewan and settled in Regina.
In 1955, at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wis., Erwin was playing the piano for a room full of students on campus as they prepared the space for an upcoming play. Amongst the students was Neva, a girl from Kansas and Erwin caught her eye.
“The first time I saw Erwin he was playing piano,” Neva says “I had to ask someone who he was.”
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Erwin says the incident sparked the beginning of the couple’s relationship,
“For some reason or another, Neva was attracted to the pianist. That started the whole event,” Erwin says. Following their first meeting, Erwin asked Neva out on not one but two dates in the same moment. Neva recalls how she was nervous he wouldn’t like her after the first date.
“I thought to myself what if he doesn’t like me after the first date?” she says. “He’s still going to have to take me on the second date.”
The dates led the couple to make their relationship official. A year later, Erwin got a teaching job in North Dakota. But Neva was in her first year of her nurse’s training program and students weren’t able to get married until the last six months of training.
“I told him I would quit training if we could get married,” says Neva.
The soon tied the knot and raised two boys. When asked about the secret to the success of their seven-decade relationship, Erwin says, “When we did something, we did it together. The good, bad and evil… Even though there wasn’t much evil.”
Erwin and Neva share more details from their life together in the video above.
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