Several years ago, my husband and I attended a marriage conference at a resort hotel, along with a few hundred other married couples. During the opening seminar, the moderator asked for people to stand up, with the qualification that they had parents who were alive and married over 25 years. In a room with hundreds of people, lots of us stood. The moderator continued increasing the number of years of our parents’ marriages (asking those who didn't qualify to sit down), until he got to 50 years of marriage. By that time, only a select few of us were left standing. I was amazed! I had never fully realized before how unique and fortunate I was to have parents alive and married so long.