Bill and Kelli Dozhier | 40 years

Bill and Kelli have been married 40 years. They’ve renewed their wedding vows three times since marrying on June 4, 1977, for their 10th, 20th and 40th anniversaries.
How’d they meet?
Kelli says, “One of his friends that we both knew brought him over and it must have been in the morning because I remember I was making scrambled eggs, and he walked in the door and that was pretty much it from there.”
They met in Oregon, where both originally hail.
“We dated for about two-and-a-half months and went to Reno and got married, and we’ve been married for 40 years. Everybody said, ‘aw they’ll never stay married,’ but we fooled ’em,” Bill said.
Kelli said she wouldn’t encourage young people to get hitched the way she did.
“It’s not advice I would give people, because I think for most people it probably wouldn’t work out. But for us it did.”
Today the couple has two children, 11 grandchildren, with one on the way.
Advice they would you give young couples just starting out is about the same they’d give someone joining the workforce.
“Like I told my kids when they got married, marriage is a job, just like getting up and going to work every day. You’ve got to work at it. Bottom line: she’s not only my wife, she’s my best friend, she goes every place with me – hunting, fishing…” says Bill.
Adds Kelli “…and he’ll go to the mall with me.”
Asked to describe what true love means to them, Kelli said its a byproduct of precious time together.
“It came together so quickly for us, but I think when people use the word, ‘true love,’ I think that’s growth. I think that’s time together. I think there’s a connection when you get together, but I think true love grows with time. I don’t think it’s something you just automatically have. It’s something that develops in time as you get to learn each other and know each other and you grow together,” she said.
Asked to describe their roughest time during their long marriage, both said economic hardship was the most difficult to endure.
“I think I go back to right after our son was born and Bill got laid off of work for eight months. We cut firewood, he sold his jeep…” Kelli said.
Bill was quick to add, “We paid our bills…”
Kelli continues, “We paid everything but it was a really hard time. But you learn from that. We’re hunters so we had deer meat, and powdered milk because we lived basically up in the mountains in a little community up there. It was a really tough time but I think those hard times are good for everybody.”
Bill says he and Kelli have endured the same ups and downs any couple does.
“We’ve had several ups and downs, but we always seemed to work our way out of them. We never got in trouble by not paying bills. We managed. We did what we had to do to put food on the table so the kids never went without.”
Today the couple lives by a mantra that includes quality time spent together. It’s really the most romantic thing they do, get away together.
“We never took vacations, we just worked, and she got sick. And we sat down and I said, ‘that’s it – we’re going to start taking vacations.’ So we try to take three every year,” says Bill.
“We go to Wendover two or three times a year. You’ve got to be practical and put things away for retirement, but you also have to enjoy life while you can,” Kelli agreed.