Dan and Laura Sudhoff have a framed black-and-white photo on display in their living room. It shows Laura with long hair and a wraparound dress, Dan in blue jeans and a t-shirt, each no more than twenty years old. He’s hoisting her up on his shoulder in the doorframe of a farmhouse, and they’re smiling with that glow people have when they’re profoundly in love.
The photo was taken in the '70s, when the young couple moved from New Jersey to Vermont with their baby daughter. They had already been through the challenges of difficult parents and teenage pregnancy, and were about to start raising a family in an old farmhouse in central Vermont. Now, the two of them have been together for 58 years.
As part of the series exploring love this week, Dan and Laura talk about their long partnership.
Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for clarity and concision.
Dan Sudhoff: Love is not being able to start your day without the person you love.
Laura Sudhoff: Love is life. It's what makes us exist.
Dan Sudhoff: I'm Daniel Sudhoff. I live in Roxbury, Vermont.
Laura Sudhoff: My name is Laura Sudhoff and I live in Roxbury, Vermont also.
Dan Sudhoff: We met in the schoolyard. I'm sitting there, dumb as dirt, just being a kid. And I get approached by her girlfriend, who tells me that she likes me.
Laura Sudhoff: I remember Dan being taller than all the other kids and looking more like a man.
Dan Sudhoff: Laura was skinny. Didn't dress well at all. She had a weird haircut. But there was something about her that was undeniable.
For me, I grew up in a dysfunctional household and there wasn't a lot of love going around. So at the beginning, just to have someone that you could be with, who wasn't judging you or slapping you around, was really nice. And it was so warm and so inviting, and she was so sweet to me. And I'd never, never had that before.
Laura Sudhoff: I also didn't have a lot of love in my family. I mean, they loved me, but it was, you know, it was very traditional and whatever. But here I had this person that really liked me and wanted to be with me, and that felt really good.
Dan Sudhoff: So that's where it started. And it was, it was pretty young to get started, but you know — when you know, you know,
Laura Sudhoff: When we found out that we were pregnant, I was 17.
Dan Sudhoff: I was 18 when we found out. And we left Planned Parenthood and there was a long stairway and we danced all the way down.
Laura Sudhoff: And all the way down the street. We were so happy, we were elated.
It didn't matter about all the things that everybody warned us about. We were going to be together and we were going to have this wonderful child that was made from love. And we were just thrilled. We were thrilled.
So I was going to high school. Dan was working. I still lived with my parents. I had to tell them, that was rough.
Dan Sudhoff: We had to tell them.
Laura Sudhoff: Actually, Dan told them.
Dan Sudhoff: Yes. I told them. Her mother hit the ceiling screeching like a stepped-on cat. The father got real quiet and gave me a beer. He knew that he didn't want to have a pregnant daughter home all by herself. And he was very wise there. He accepted me. The mother never did, which was okay with me because I didn't care much for her either.
Laura Sudhoff: [Laughs] So, yeah. So we told them and then we planned this wedding. We all loaded up into the car, his older brother's Lincoln. I had my friend make a wedding dress.
Dan Sudhoff: She was still sewing it on the way to —
Laura Sudhoff: [Laughs] Yeah, she was still sewing it on the way to the town hall, and it was the weekend of Memorial Day. So the entire outside of it was all decorated.
Dan Sudhoff: The town hall —
Laura Sudhoff: The town hall was all decorated so it looked like, you know, that they were decorating for us. So we had an apartment, a car and a baby. Quickly.
You know, our parents were really worked up about us being kids with a baby. And that went on for a while until we finally figured out that we had to move.
Dan Sudhoff: We got our buddies together, we had a good crew of friends, and we loaded up their Volkswagen buses and their Ford vans with all our stuff. And we moved up to Vermont. Then our life really started.
Hasn't always been easy. We didn't have any money. And we grew at different rates. Laura would take a growth spurt, because we were kids, and I would lag behind. And then I would take a growth spurt and she would lag behind. So as we were growing up, there were times where we didn't see eye to eye. But there was always love. And there was always those kids that we had to take care of.
Laura Sudhoff: There was difficult times, but we had things weaving us, constantly, weaving us together. We worked together. We made all our decisions together. It was the weaving. We wove everything together. I never wanted to unweave it.
We've been married for 53 years.
Dan Sudhoff: And then we were together for —
Laura Sudhoff: Five.
Dan Sudhoff: Five. I'm 72. She's 71.
At 72. We know the best years are behind us, but we still got love. Now I just want to take it to the end of the line. I want her to be with me and I wanna be with her in our last moments.
Laura: Me too.
