GOLDEN LOVE

It was snowing on Valentine’s Day in 1975, the day Roxanne Schumaker chose for her wedding date.

“What I thought was, he’d never be able to forget it,” she said of her future husband, Peter “Bud” Habana. “Everything would remind him, all the ads…”

She was right: Bud never forgot it – especially their most recent one.

The Albert Lea natives celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary this year – another snowy Valentine’s Day – with family and friends at BridgeWater at Owatonna.

Their golden milestone was bittersweet; after decades together, they are living apart, and Roxie is sick.

The Habanas have taken the vow “in sickness and health” seriously.

“Not quite 20 years ago, she had a brain aneurysm, which caused a stroke,” Bud said of his wife, who sat beside him in a motorized wheelchair.

Initially misdiagnosed, Roxie was sent home from the emergency room. Three days later, she was unable to speak or open her eyes.

She was flown to Rochester, where she spent two weeks in the hospital, part of the time in a coma. Too weak to be transferred to a rehabilitation center, Roxie spent a month in an Albert Lea nursing home, then two months in the rehab unit at Naeve Hospital.

As she listened to Bud tell the story, Roxie reached for his hand.

“It makes me sad, what he went through,” she said.

She had to relearn how to speak, walk, sit up, and to strengthen her left side before she was able to go home.

Just 49, Roxie could no longer operate her day care and required a walker for mobility.

For the next 19 years, Bud took care of her at their home, “but I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said.

She moved to BridgeWater about a year ago. Bud still lives in the couple’s home in Albert Lea and makes the trip to Owatonna two to three times a week.

“Oh, at least,” Roxie said. “And he calls me at least once a day, usually two or three times. He’s always checking to see what I’m up to.”

She settled in well, quickly making friends.

“She’s only been here a year, and she is the most welcoming person,” said Linda Anderson, whose mother lives at BridgeWater. “She started the afternoon coffee with the girls. She and Bud know everybody’s name; they’re always saying hi, and they’re always very inclusive.”

Her own mother has dementia, Anderson said, and “Roxie has been a very good sounding board. That’s why it hit me hard, too.”

“It” is Roxie’s recent diagnosis of uterine cancer; the chemotherapy treatments have landed her in the hospital twice in the last two months.

“She’s gotten a lot weaker,” Bud said, and lowering the chemo doses hasn’t seemed to help.

After her last hospitalization, “I’m feeling great,” Roxie said, squeezing Bud’s hand.

“It may be working,” he said of the treatments, “but they can’t keep putting this woman in the hospital.”

Still, Roxie remains hopeful she can one day recover enough to return to the home where they raised their four children.

“She’s had a rocky road,” said their son, Cody Habana. “She’s the best woman, and my biggest fan.”

The relationships with their children are all strong, Roxie said. “That’s how we raised them: Family is No. 1.”

Their obstacles, she said, have only contributed to the “strength and dedication” of their marriage.

She first spotted 19-year-old Bud while she was dating someone else.

“I was with a different guy, and we used to do what they called a ‘drag around the lake,’ then we’d drive by the gas station that he worked at,” Roxie said. “I always looked for him – and I didn’t know that he always looked for me to come by. I didn’t realize it.”

The two eventually met, but “he had a girlfriend, of course,” she laughed. “One … plus. He was one of those players.”

Bud laughed, too. “I just knew a lot of women,” he said.

“He was so cute,” Roxie said. “He was a good-looking man – still is. And what do you always say about me?”

“You weren’t easy like those others,” Bud said, still laughing. “You were kind of a challenge. But she was the only one I let drive my ’69 Chevelle, with a 396 (engine) in it, and four on the floor – and I let her drive the damn thing.”

Muscle cars aside, Roxie said she knew he was the one “the first time I saw him at that gas station. In fact, I told somebody, ‘that’s the man I’m going to marry.’”

Bud admitted he didn’t remember when he realized he loved Roxie: “It was a long time ago, you know. But look at you now,” he said to her.

“Happy as can be,” she replied.

To this day, she said, holding up her arm, “I get goosebumps when I think of him, and I cry when he leaves. He’s my main man.”

Bud got quiet, then grew emotional, when asked what gave him strength.

“You just don’t quit,” he said. “Don’t quit.”

The two hugged, and Roxie had her own answer: “Just being together – sticking it out together.

“You’re my main squeeze, forever and ever, baby,” she told him. “We’ll just take it day by day.”