On Track to Celebrate a 75th Wedding Anniversary

My parents, Marie and Clifton Coleman, are on track to celebrate the 75th anniversary of their wedding day of June 4, 1951.

How many marriages (and lives) survive to their 75th wedding anniversary? Not that many… way more make it to their 50th. According to the internet, fewer than 0.002% of marriages in the United States reach a 75th wedding anniversary. This milestone is so rare that the U.S. Census Bureau does not even track it as a standard statistical category.

Marie McClain graduated as salutatorian of her Sedalia High School class on May 18, 1951, and Clifton Coleman from Lynn Grove High School exactly one year earlier. The couple lived in Nashville, Tennessee, while Clifton attended office mechanics school but returned to Kentucky upon finishing the course.

He has worked over the years in various types of sales, most recently as the broker of Coleman Real Estate & Property Management on 12th Street in Murray. He has helped countless families over the years to find affordable lodging, first as a mortgage and loan officer, then as a real estate salesman, and finally as a real estate broker and rental manager.

They are members of the Glendale Church of Christ. In the early 1990s, both Clifton and Marie served as guardians on the television set of Christy, based on the novel by Catherine Marshall. Their grandson, Clay Jeter, played Creed Allen in the show. In 2024, Clay won an Emmy Award for directing Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. His grandparents, now 93, are on track to do exactly that.

The couple has two daughters, Jana Marie Little of Murray, Kentucky, and myself. Jana now serves as the broker for Coleman Real Estate, and I’m a Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University. We both graduated from Murray State University, where I taught in the early 1980s.

They also have two granddaughters, Kayla Little and Nikki Wilbanks. Kayla is well known in the Murray community for her beautiful singing, both with Todd Hill’s orchestra and her band, Little by Little. Nikki is a homemaker in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and a freelance writer of Lifeway devotionals and Sunday School lessons.

The couple has four great grandchildren, Finn Wilbanks and Elise Wilbanks of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Frances Jeter and Silas Jeter of Los Angeles. Their son-in-law, Norman Jeter, worked for several years as a veterinarian in Calloway County with Elwood Brown before relocating to Clarksville, Tennessee.
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The couple married in Corinth, Mississippi, as did my dad's brother, Billie Coleman, to Bronzie Tidwell, of Lynn Grove, and his sister, Lou Ann Coleman, to Prentice Darnell. Their nephews, great nieces, and great nephews live in Calloway County, Graves County, and Marshall County.