Submitted Photo Jay and Marjorie Rice have been married for 70 years.

MADDOCK – Marjorie and Jay Rice met in high school and have been married for 70 years. They have lived on a family farm in their hometown of Maddock for most of their lives.

“We got married in the wintertime,” Majorie Rice said. “After high school I spent eight weeks teaching at a rural school over the summer and then in that January we were married.”

Both Majorie and Jay Rice have lived in Maddock for the majority of their lives. After having spent two years away from home they decided it was time to move back.

“Jay was in the military for two years. One of those two years Barb, our daughter, and I spent a year with him in San Antonio, Texas,” Marjorie Rice said. “It was an interesting experience. We didn’t have a lot of money at the time but we were lucky enough to live in an apartment in a private home and the woman that lived there knew a lot about the town.”

Though Marjorie had spent time away from home during school when she attended the Benson County Ag school, where the students lived in dormitories, she and her husband were not used to life outside of North Dakota.

“After Jay finished his two years in Texas, we moved back to Maddock, where he got a job at the elevator and I started going to summer school,” Marjorie Rice said. “After 17 years I got a degree from the University of North Dakota.”

Jay Rice also attended college and was debating going back, but farming was pretty good in North Dakota at the time and the Rices had the opportunity to start buying land.

“We bought as we went along. We had bought a couple quarters when we were in college. Not anybody in their right mind would’ve done it, but we did,” Marjorie chuckled.

The Rices still live on that property today. Another couple frequents the farmstead – a couple of mated geese the Rices have named Ollie and Lena.

“Geese mate for life you know, So, Ollie and Lena have been coming to the property for years now. They come back and nest behind the buildings until they leave again next year,” Marjorie Rice said. “We wait for them in the spring, and when Jay sees them he’ll come in and tell me that ‘Ollie and Lena say hello.'”

After years spent in Texas, moving home and getting their degrees, and buying and farming land, the Rices rely on the routine they’ve mastered over the last 70 years together to maintain their happy lifestyle, and much like Ollie and Lena are in it for life.

“I read somewhere that said ‘The journey is the destination and the search is the treasure,'” Majorie Rice said. “We are grateful for having had such a great journey, filled with so many treasures.”