70 years: Former Warden couple celebrates platinum anniversary

WARDEN — Kay L. and Norma Lybbert said one of the keys to a successful marriage is commitment. The Lybberts have some experience in that - they were married in 1952 and will celebrate their 70th anniversary this month.

Norma Lybbert said it hasn’t always been easy, but they always found a way.

“We always worked it out,” she said.

“We’ve had a good marriage,” Kay Lybbert said.

Over the years they have made some mistakes, he said, but they’ve always managed to get through them as a couple and as a family. The Lybberts have seven children.

Not everyone was sure it would work out, back in 1952. Kay Lybbert was 16, Norma was 15 and a sophomore at Moses Lake High School.

“I’d already quit school,” Kay said.

He quit to go to work on the family farm in Mae Valley, he said, but he already had plenty of farming experience. Sugar beets were a major crop in the early 1950s, and Kay Lybbert was running a beet harvester at 14 years of age.

“I grew up young,” he said.

But his dad thought he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, at least not as serious as things were getting.

“He told me I couldn’t see her anymore, and I had to do something,” he said.

So he came up with a solution that was a little radical. He told his parents a fib, the kind of fib that in 1952 pretty much mandated marriage. They were married March 22, 1952 in the Lybbert family living room.

Family and friends were skeptical, Norma said, and some disapproved of her choice.

“But they got over it,” she said.

Kay said they started out on their own farm in Block 40 near Moses Lake before moving to Warden, where they lived for about 40 years. They moved to the Spokane area in 2012 to be closer to their surviving children.

Mostly they grew potatoes and wheat, Kay said, but basically, he raised whatever was profitable.

“About anything you could farm,” he said.

It wasn’t always easy. In 1952, girls who were married couldn’t stay in school; Norma had to drop out of school and that required some adjustment. Bad weather in 1955 meant they lost the year’s crop and all the equity they had built up in their land. Kay ended up going to work for a few years before he could start his own farm again.

But the worst was in 1957 when their house caught fire. Their young son died in the blaze. Another son died in 2010 and a daughter in 2021.

That’s not how life should work, Kay said.

“It’s hard,” Norma said.

But the tragedies didn’t break them up.

“They seemed to pull us together rather than pull us apart,” Norma said.

They worked hard for the life they built, Kay said.

“Needless to say, we did it together,” he said.

In fact, that’s true of everything they did, work or play.

“We love to do things together,” he said.

His wife always supported him in decisions - he could have said they’d be moving to Alaska and Norma would have gone along, he said.

They shared a commitment to each other, he said, and Norma agreed.

“We argue but we end up loving each other,” she said.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.