Ray Brandemuehl remembers they just couldn’t find a day.

It was 1953, and he had returned from serving in the Armed Forces for the Korean War, and he and his fiancé, Kay, were determined to get married at St. Clement Church.

Problem was, so were so many other young couples.

“All the Saturdays were taken up that we wanted to get married,” Ray recalled.

“The church was busy,” Kay added.

In the rectory, the priest was telling them they would have to wait another month, at least, before the church would be available.

Now getting married in the church was important to Ray and Kay, as faith was important to both of them. Ray grew up near the church, and his mother would make the robes and alter decorations for the weekly services.

Kay loved the church, and would be active in many parts, including the choir.

But there simply were no Saturdays available.

Then inspiration stepped in - why not Monday? That worked better for the young couple anyway, as Ray was operating the pool hall on the square, and business on Saturdays downtown Lancaster was popping.

Monday was the day off for most shop owners, and that is how, a little more than 70 years ago, Ray and Kay Brandemuehl finally had the day to get married.

Earlier this summer, the fruits of the longstanding marriage could be seen when their children and grandchildren held a party in their honor at Vesperman Farms, and the couple were surrounded by numerous friends and family to make their 70th anniversary great.

“They told us the only thing we need to worry about was not to die,” Kay joked about the planning of the event, which their children spent six months planning.

The couple are closing in on the 75th anniversary of when they met, in the spring of 1949, and reflected back on their relationship, its longevity, and what they looked to instill in those around them.

It all began on a roller rink at the Grant County Fairgrounds in Spring 1949.

Kay’s family had just moved into Lancaster, and she went up to the roller rink, where LHS senior Ray was hanging out.

There was some spark that first night they met, and while he played it cool, one can tell Ray was smitten when he talks about how Kay had to go back to where they were living before because she had promised to go to the prom with a guy back there.

“It was the only time she ever went back,” Ray quipped.

They started seeing each other, but they purposely kept things from getting too serious right away. Ray was off to college in the fall, and Kay would have her own senior year in high school.

Ray kept finding his way back, however, as he was going to UW-Platteville.

When Kay graduated high school, she found her way to Madison. She and her friends had gotten a house in Madison to enjoy the summer, and then with a contact, she began working for Wisconsin Power and Light.

Meanwhile, Ray found himself working in the summer for the State Highway Department, and when he and the rest of his classmates were looking to go back to college in the fall, he was given a proposition - come to work full-time. Ray knew he was sitting with a bit of a time crunch - the Korean War was underway, and Ray knew his draft number was coming up soon.

So instead of going back to college, he took the job, letting them know he would have to ship out for the war at some point.

In the meantime before he got called up, a family friend of Kay’s had passed away, and Kay came back to Lancaster, and began working with Weber Bros. Jewelers.

They found themselves together again.

When he was finally called up in to the Armed Forces, Ray made a proposition to himself - if Kay was still around when he got out, and she wanted to, he would ask her to marry him.

He wanted to make the proposition to Kay before he went, but he did not want to get married, leave Kay pregnant while he went off to serve, and end up killed in action, leaving her a single mother to fend for herself.

“I didn’t want that,” Ray reflected.

So Ray found himself doing the longest 21 months in service, waiting to get back. He was at basic training in Hawaii, then back home for two weeks on leave, before he was shipped off to Japan for additional training.

By the time he actually made it to Korea, the infantry unit he was meant to be with was full, readying for deployment, and he was sent for artillery training. Then he found himself going through additional job training.

All the different time being in Japan and Korea, he racked up his credited days, and he finally was able to get out in Spring 1953.

Together again in Lancaster, Ray and Kay began to plan out what was next.

If they only could get a date.

When they did get married, they started their life of traveling together by driving down to New Orleans, with Kay learning how to drive on the way down, getting her first lessons passing slower cars on pre-interstate roads.

Finally married, they set up in an apartment on the square, and quickly started raising a family. In the slide show their children made for them, one could set their calendars to the new arrival to the Brandemuehl family in the beginning, with a new child coming every 13 months.

Those children learned determination and hard work would make any dream successful, no matter who told you it couldn’t be done.

Despite them both being ‘city dwellers,’ they seemed to have an itch for land. At first, they bought a home on Sheriden Street which allowed them to have a big garden, before the fall of 1963 when they bought a 98-acre farm.

One of Ray and Kay’s children remembers one of the biggest opponents of the farm was Ray’s own father.

“Don’t tell me I can’t do something, then you will watch me do it,” Ray stated, and that’s how the idea of if they set their mind to it, they can do anything was instilled in each of the Brandemuehl children.

That, along with how to live off the land.

The family raised sweet corn and sold it on the square, along with other items like hickory nuts. They would pick it in the morning - Kay quipped that it still had the dew on it when they sold it - to make sure it was fresh.

The children would take their money and decide together what to get with their earnings.

Their kids noted they gave them an eye to see what the land was providing - asparagus growing wild along the road, or morel hunting. There was hunting game - each one felt they could never go hungry when being out in the woods.

Ray fell into his next career by accident - he looked to build a new home, but then someone offered much more for the house, and he found himself in a 20-year career building houses in southwest Wisconsin.

For his workers, he would often find rambunctious groups that may have started going down the wrong path, but they would work hard together, and both Ray and Kay were proud of some of the people they came in contact with over the years that really built futures.

As for Kay, she found the spotlight in the 90s when she became a model.

She had been doing a number of creative endeavors, like her own upholstery business, and writing stories that ran in different publications, but one day she was discovered as a model. “I fit the image,” she noted, and after talking to friend Harold Fager, who was doing acting and modeling, she found herself in print ads, and commercials.

“Those years go by pretty fast, but they were fun,” Kay noted of the time, joking she did enough of it not to feel uncomfortable doing it.

Because of the seasons of homebuilding, they found themselves doing a lot of traveling - driving out west, flying to Australia, and South America.

“They took a different route every time,” one child said of their western travels.

They joked that one time, they were helping a friend move some items from Chile, and they took a bag, but they didn’t know what was in it.

“Can you imagine if they searched it and found drugs?” Ray joked.

Ray is def i n i tely a jokester, adding humor to the relationship. Kay reflected how he would be out with grandchildren, and they would come back if it was true this is how you call hummingbirds, or deer.

Kay is no slouch in the humor department, either.

“We don’t have any advice, we never got any advice,” she quipped on what is their secret for a successful marriage.

While they may not be giving that answer directly, others around them got the idea by watching them.

“You are great role models for us,” one person wrote at their party last summer.