AFTER ALL THESE YEARS ...

Married at 17, DeKalb couple shares why they’re still going strong

By CAMDEN LAZENBY clazenby@shawmedia.com

DeKALB – Edwin Drury, 87, was an underclassmen in high school when he met a woman named Joan through friends in DeKalb, and nearly three-quarters of a century later he’s celebrating his 71st Valentine’s Day with her.

Joan Drury, 87, and Edwin Drury, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren last September.

“I met my wife through her twin sister,” Edwin Drury, who goes by Morry, said. “I was with some of my friends at a drive-in on West Lincoln Highway. I had seen her probably a year before getting on a bus in Sycamore – I thought what a beautiful lady.”

He said he didn’t know her name at the time, but within half a year he managed to gain some face time with her and build rapport. That next year, 1952, they started dating.

Morry, who moved to DeKalb from Kentucky while still in school, said decades of marriage are evidence enough that their courtship went well.

They were both 15 years old when they met. They married at 17.

“We eloped,” Joan Drury, a lifelong DeKalb County resident said, when asked what their wedding day was like.

They were married in Jacksonville, Indiana, at 8 a.m. on a Sunday.

Asked why they got married in that fashion Joan said she doesn’t really know.

“We just decided to get married and thought that was the easiest way, I guess,” Joan Drury said.

Although Morry didn’t finish high school, he still managed to become a successful business owner. For 43 years, he ran and operated Drury Plumbing out of DeKalb. Although he’s been retired for almost 12 years, he said he sometimes still gets calls from old customers and he’ll occasionally go out and help them.

He’s also got his own newspaper connection: In the late 1940s, Morry worked for two years for the Daily Chronicle as a carrier.

Today, the couple has a family of four children, six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Their youngest daughter, Kimberly Knowlton, 64, described her parents as fantastic and said she couldn’t have handpicked better parents if she’d tried.

“To still have both your parents and to be able to see this milestone is – I’m so grateful,” Knowlton said. Knowlton, of DeKalb, played a pivotal role in her parents’ 70th wedding anniversary when she invited DeKalb Mayor Cohen Barnes to attend the party.

As a part of the festivities, Barnes gave the couple a key to the city and issued a proclamation naming Sept. 21 as “Morry and Joan Drury Day.”

“It was amazing,” Knowlton said. “I contacted him myself and he was so excited about it. He came out, did the proclamation, gave them the key to the city – he was as excited as everyone else, I believe.”

Barnes didn’t just read the proclamation at the party, he also read it aloud at a DeKalb City Council meeting, letting the community know of Morry and Joan Drury’s seven decades of marriage.

Barnes said he was happy to issue the proclamation because it was for two individuals who committed to each other, committed to their business and committed to their community.

“To not take a moment, to not pause and recognize such an accomplishment even though a lot of people may think it’s not that big of a deal ‘yeah they were married, yeah they like like each other, yeah they had a business,’ but stuff like that doesn’t happen.” Barnes said. “And I’m a real big believer in the little things sometimes are massive when you actually look at what they did accomplish. And for me to be able to take a moment and recognize them for what they did, and what they continue to do, I think is incredibly important for our community to do that for its residents.”

See DRURYS, page 8