My great great great grandmother lived a romance novel cliche. She was the domestic of a wealthy family in Wales who happened to catch the eye of one of the men of the house. When she discovered herself in the family way, her employers paid for her to emigrate to America. She did eventually meet another man who married her and accepted her son. No idea how that marriage really was though, because the son eventually did what was unthinkable in the 20’s and walked out on his wife and children. It’s such a big family secret that I didn’t even find out about either story until I was in my late 20s, and the second story only by accident.
My father has a brother who was divorced before he married his second wife. It was so hush hush. I mean we do not discuss the first wife. That’s so crazy weird to me. As far as I can tell it was a matter of irreconcilable differences and not something to be so ashamed about, but whatever. My dad’s family is just weird anyway.
My great grandmother’s family fell on hard times and sent her to live with my great grandfather’s family. She gave birth to my Aunt Mary at the age of 14, in 1898 and my grandfather in 1900. Their marriage lasted until my great grandfather died at eighty-something in 1957.
She became an educated, accomplished woman and lived a long life, but usually claimed to be a few years older than she actually was.
Not mine, but my husband’s grandparents. She lived in Nova Scotia and was engaged to to be married. She came down to Boston to buy her wedding dress. While there met the dashing minor league baseball from Boston, and ran away with him! Married and settled in Boston and converted to Catholicism.
My family has a similar situation - my uncle’s first wife (and mother of my cousin). Weird thing is, this wasn’t, like, back in the day - this was when my cousin and I were ~6, so about twenty years ago, well after divorce was a common enough occurrence.
They had some more significant problems, though - she was an alcoholic, who occasionally left their <5 year old home alone while she went out to the bar, and once in awhile got violent.
I would occasionally ask my cousin how her mom was, but never when my grandparents were in the room. As far as my grandparents were concerned, my cousin just poped into existence one day.
I didn’t know about my own parents’ short courtship until after my father died, apparently they were engaged within 3 weeks of their first date and married 2 months later. However, that ddid explain why she would always scoff at TV shows and articles about how important it was to properly prepare for marriage. No premature kids though.
As an aside, old people often have cool stories. There was an elderly family friend of ours ( now deceased) that owned a speakeasy during Prohibition and used to date Legs Diamond.
And there is a friend of my uncle’s that has great first hand stories of working with the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s.
I just learned that my husband’s grandparents married secretly. They were both in their final year of medical school at the time (1938,) and she would not have been allowed to remain in school had it been known she was married.
On reading this thread I surprised to see how many other grandparents kept their marriages secret for a time.
My grandmother and grandfather had a quarrel and broke their engagement, then she went back to him and they made it up. Grandpa wanted to go get married then and there, but Grandma said she couldn’t do it without telling her parents. So the next weekend they took the train to Liberty, Missouri, which is one county past Kansas City, Missouri. Some of the people in their little Kansas town took the KC paper, and they didn’t want the legal notice to show there.
A minister in Kansas City married them, Grandpa had gone to his church while he was there in auto mechanics school.
For the rest of the school year Grandma lived in Paxico, and Grandpa lived in Topeka, with them meeting on the weekends and sneaking around. Grandma, who is still with us at 105, told us “I can still remember how those desk clerks would look at us!”