‘We lean on God a lot’: Couple will soon celebrate 66 years of marriage

In their nearly 66 years of marriage, Jim and Sally Wehbey have encountered numerous changes – homes in Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa, as well as careers in cattle buying, banking and physical therapy.

The constant for the members of St. Robert Bellarmine Parish in Omaha, though, has been their Catholic faith, a faith that has sustained them in raising two daughters and has helped them triumph through ups and downs.

“We lean on God a lot,” Sally said. “You make it work. You need to work at it.”

The Wehbeys plan to be among the couples at a Marriage Celebration Mass at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 10 at  St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha. Archbishop Michael G. McGovern will bless married couples celebrating milestone anniversaries.

All are invited to the Mass, which will honor the beauty and Christian witness of sacramental marriage.

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The Wehbeys’ decades-long commitment of faith and love began with a year-long courtship in 1958 after Jim was discharged from a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force. He was 23, she 18.

Neither Jim nor Sally claim love at first sight, but they certainly caught each other’s attention.

“I just thought she was a good-looking girl,” Jim said recently.

Sally was just as complimentary: “Jim was pretty cute, too. A nice-looking guy.”

Religion, however, was not a common denominator.

Jim grew up in Immaculate Conception Parish on South 24th Street in Omaha. He attended grade school there before graduating from high school at Boys Town. Sally (nee Ferris) was from Council Bluffs and not Catholic.

Knowing how important the Catholic faith was to her husband, Sally took instruction in the faith at Creighton University. The couple married Aug. 22, 1959, at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Council Bluffs.

Though she attended Mass every Sunday with her husband and subsequently with their daughters, she didn’t convert to the faith for another five or six years when the family was living in Emporia, Kansas.

“Our oldest daughter, Tammy, was going to Catholic school and making her First Communion,” Sally said. “I thought if it was going to be important to Tammy, it probably needed to be important to her mother.”

Armed with a degree in animal science from the University of Nebraska, Jim became a cattle buyer whose job took the family to Emporia, then Concordia, Kansas, and Washington, Iowa. The Wehbeys stayed in the town of Washington for some 20 years.

The family returned to Omaha in the early 1990s, when Jim transitioned from cattle buying to working in the physical therapy department at Archbishop Bergan Mercy Hospital. Sally, at the same time, started a long career with First National Bank of Omaha.

The Wehbeys are particularly proud of the faith they handed down to their daughters, Tracey and Tammy, both Creighton University graduates and practicing Catholics.

“Our two daughters go to church, and I have to think their dad has a lot to do with that,” Sally said.

Jim said he’s rarely given his wife flowers. But Sally said her husband has given her so much more.

“Jim has always made me feel like I’m very special,” she said. “That’s the most romantic thing he’s done and from day one.”

Sitting across the room from her for an interview, Jim smiled.

“I love you,” he said to Sally.

Sally and Jim Wehbey enjoy a vacation in Utah.
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