Love Story: Bill and Irene Ober, of Huntington

Irene and Bill Ober of Huntington celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this month. Credit: Ober family
Bill Ober of Huntington recalls the day he “bumped” into his future wife, Irene.
I met Irene on my first day as a social studies teacher at Locust Valley High School in January 1967. The school’s principal was showing me around. As I was walking down the stairs, this very attractive woman was coming up the stairs. She wasn’t paying attention and we literally bumped into each other. We both said, “Excuse me,” and kept walking.
Later that day, I went to my assigned classroom and recognized the teacher across the hall as the woman I met on the stairs. I walked over and formally introduced myself. She was Irene Dinter back then. It was love at first sight for me.
All teachers had an official student attendance register book. I often used that as an excuse to walk over to Irene’s classroom and ask her to show me the proper way to record absences or sick days. We got to know each other and discovered we both went to Hofstra University and, coincidentally, visited Germany in 1964. We both loved going to Jones Beach. She was 24 and I was 26.
Irene lived in Westbury and had been teaching math at the high school since 1965. I lived in Amityville and served in the Marine Corps infantry from 1961 to 1964. In 1962, I was deployed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, during the missile crisis and was then assigned to Okinawa, Japan, as a driver for the base commander. From 1965 to 1967, I was in the Marine Reserves.
In February, I was teaching an Asian history course and decided to take my students on a field trip to Chinatown in Manhattan for the Lunar New Year’s festivities. I told Irene I was going into the city before the trip to scope things out and asked her to accompany me. She agreed. We took the Long Island Rail Road and then the subway downtown. I took her to a restaurant for lunch. This was our first date.
We continued seeing each other, which we kept secret from staff and students until I proposed to Irene six weeks later, on April 1, at sunset on a beach in Amityville. Everyone noticed her engagement ring at school that Monday.
On April 6, 1968, we exchanged vows at the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Garden City. That summer, we took an 11-week honeymoon. We had a pop-up camper and visited campgrounds in 44 states, Mexico and Canada. Two memorable experiences on our trip were the mule ride down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and adopting an abandoned border collie in Washington. “Westee” lived with us for 14 years. We still vacation at an RV resort in Florida every year.
Irene taught at Locust Valley High School for two more years until we started our family. We lived in Dix Hills before moving to Huntington in 1974. I retired from Locust Valley High School in 1998. Irene returned to teaching and retired in 1999 from Manhasset High School.
We are very active and enjoy taking walks together. She also golfs, plays pickleball and kayaks.
This month, we celebrated our 50th anniversary and Irene’s homecoming from the hospital after a successful stomach cancer surgery. We plan to continue celebrating on a trip to Europe with our daughter, her fiance, our son and daughter-in-law as well as our two grandchildren.
— With Virginia Dunleavy