JOY AND ROGER GULICK
Married 50 years
Home: Lookout Mountain
Kids: Tim, 47, and Kathleen, 44
Roger and Joy Gulick are seasoned travelers, each logging more than 50,000 miles last year. As missionaries they’ve seen such exotic places as Uzbekistan, Turkey and Iraq. “Joy can go on a five-week trip to four countries with a carry-on…and a large purse,” Roger says with a smile. But it was the travel in 1962 that’s most meaningful to the couple – when he almost missed their wedding.
Joy & Roger GulickThe two had met two years prior through Joy’s brother. Working with Young Life in Baltimore, she was visiting her sibling in Philadelphia, where Roger was stationed in the Navy. The two started dating in February of 1961, but their hectic schedules caused things to cool. A full five months passed without them seeing one another, and Joy had all but given up on a relationship. But one fateful October weekend, Roger came to visit. By the next weekend, he was thinking marriage and by December, he proposed on a docked Naval ship.