January 28th, 1956 - January 28th, 2006
Longmont Daily Times-Call
Published Feb. 26, 2006
Valerie Singleton
The Daily Times-Call
LONGMONT --- Chuck Tilleman found his wife in a Chicago bar. He almost lost her to a car accident.
Fifty years, five children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren later, Chuck and Mary Ann Tilleman work side by side at their business, Pinetree Peripherals Inc. in Longmont. They vacation together at least twice a year.
And though Chuck and Mary Ann spent their golden anniversary together last month in Hawaii, the couple will memorialize their 50-year marriage with family and friends during a June celebration.
"Marriage is not 50-50," Mary Ann says. "Marriage is 100-100. If he does not give me 100 percent, we are not going to stay together."
More than 50 years ago, a petite, 17-year-old Mary Ann Piech walked into that bar in Chicago to meet a blind date. After meeting and dancing with Chuck Tilleman --- a 22-year-old military man enjoying an evening out after guard duty at Midway Airport --- the spunky teen took the initiative.
"I knew when I went back to work on Monday ... that I was gonna marry him," she says. "He wasn't so sure."
Chuck's former fianceé --- named Marianne, oddly enough --- had broken off their engagement while he was serving overseas. He was in no rush to make a commitment.
Mary Ann was resilient. From July 1955 to January 1956, she spent only 12 weeks with Chuck. But on Jan. 28, 1956, the Chinook, Mont., rancher married his Chicago flame.
The couple headed to their new Montana home, but not before making a honeymoon pit stop in a now-defunct Longmont hotel with uncomfortable mattresses.
But the extended honeymoon had yet to begin.
"I gave her a nine-month honeymoon on a ranch," Chuck says, winking at his wife.
Mary Ann and Montana didn't mix well. She wasn't accustomed to the ranch lifestyle or the town's gravel roads. Shortly before Memorial Day 1956, Mary Ann flipped the couple's car on an unpaved drag. Chuck found the car bottom-side up, the roof flattened into the seats.
"She was pretty beaten up, but she was all right," Chuck recalls. "That was pretty much the real test. "She showed up (in the bar), then wrecked the car and didn't kill herself, so I figured we pretty much are supposed to be together."
It took more than 20 years for the Tillemans to find the right home. Before moving to Longmont in 1978, the family lived in Indiana, Virginia, Maryland and Minnesota.
"That was the closest we ever came to divorce," Mary Ann says of the family's time in Belle Plaine, Minn. "It's dark, cold and miserable."
A job prospect brought the Tillemans to Longmont.
"The irony is we came back in '78, and guess what?" Chuck says. "We stayed in the same hotel."
Mary Ann laughs, recalling how the hotel had the same dismal accommodations upon the Tillemans' return.
"And probably the same room with the same mattress," she says.
Valerie Singleton can be reached at 303-684-5319 or by e-mail at vsingleton@times-call.com.