After forty-three years of marriage, me and my smokin’ hot honey, my wife, Christine, renewed our vows during a ceremony in May 2014.
It seems like every spring the past few years the producers of the TV show The Bachelor have called me. Some guy or gal from Hollywood will be on the other end of the phone, and he or she always ask me the same question: “Mr. Robertson, we’re putting together our show for next season. We wanted to make sure you’re still married because we think you would make a great bachelor.”
“Yep, I’m still married,” I’ll tell them.
Hey, I don’t get a lot of joy in breaking their hearts. Between the TV producers and the magazine editors that compile their annual lists of America’s most eligible bachelors, I try to let them down easy.
It’s not like I’m trying to hide the fact that I’m married. When I go grocery shopping, I sometimes pick up a dozen roses and some candy for my wife, Christine. From time to time, I remind her of how much she means to me. When I get to the checkout line, the lady at the cash register always says, “You’re such a good husband.”
After forty-three years of marriage, me and my smokin’ hot honey, my wife, Christine, renewed our vows during a ceremony in May 2014.
“Hey, you can tell I’m married because of what I’m buying?” I ask her.
“No, it’s because you’re so good-looking,” she says.
While I was kidding about The Bachelor and the magazines, it still surprises me how many women who watch Duck Dynasty don’t know I’m married. No matter how hard I try, a lot of female fans still think I’m single.
Christine has never appeared on the show. From the start, she didn’t want anything to do with being on reality TV. She said living with me was as much reality as she needs. Plus, her health won’t allow her to be a part of the show. Filming episodes of Duck Dynasty might last several weeks, and we’re often working eight to ten hours a day. It isn’t easy, Jack! I guess that’s why women think I’m single. Over the past few years, several women have proposed to me during my speaking engagements and other public appearances. My brother Phil can’t understand why women find me so attractive. He says, “I’d understand it if they wanted to marry Willie because he has all the money. I’d even understand it if they wanted to marry Jase because he’s Willie’s right-hand man. But, no, they want to marry that—that goat!”
Hey, I’m willing to give Phil the benefit of the doubt. He wasn’t around me much when I was younger because I spent so much time in the military. He didn’t see the effect Silas Merritt Robertson had on women when I was in my prime. Hey, they were on me like bees on a honeypot! I was a player before they even invented the game, Jack!
I still have that effect on certain women. I’ll never forget the time a lady waited in line for hours to meet me. She was with a couple of her friends, and when they arrived at the front of the line, she popped the question.
“I want you to marry me,” she said.
“Hey, you don’t have enough money for me to marry you,” I told her.
“Hold on,” she said.
Then she brought her friends to the table where I was sitting.
“Hey, tell him how much I’m worth,” she said.
“If you lived to be a hundred years old, you couldn’t spend all of her money,” one of the ladies said.
“Well, then we’ve got a problem,” I said.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“I’ve got a little redhead at home who won’t like it,” I told her.
Some of the other women who have proposed to me have been a little more direct. They’ve sent photographs of themselves in love letters to our house. What they don’t know is that Christine is the one who actually reads their letters, and she has responded not so kindly to a few of them. Hey, what can I say? When you’ve got it, you’ve got it, Jack!
In spite of all the attention I get from women I meet on the road, the Good Lord has filled my heart with love and loyalty for my own Hot Honey. His peace and His power is the anchor of my heart and soul.
After more than four decades of marriage, I’m convinced there is someone out there for everybody. If you’ve seen my nephews, you’d know that’s certainly the case. I tried to warn Korie, Missy, and Jessica about my nephews, but they wouldn’t listen. I told the girls that Jase, Jep, and Willie are a lot like lawnmowers. They’re hard to get started, they emit toxic fumes, and they only work half the time!
My nephews weren’t the only ones who out-punted their coverage when it comes to marriage. The former Christine Raney and I met shortly after I left Vietnam on October 17, 1969. The army transferred me to Fort Devens in Shirley, Massachusetts, which is about fifty-five miles northwest of Boston. I was stationed there for about two years and worked in medical supply.
Christine was born and raised in Kentucky, where her father was a farmer. She was working as a seamstress in a factory that made furniture upholstery when I met her. One night, she and two of her friends picked me up when I was hitchhiking to an off-base nightclub in November 1969. From the start, Christine didn’t like me much—she thought I was arrogant and full of myself. And maybe I was.
About a month later, one of Christine’s friends set me up with her on a blind date to our company’s Christmas party. Christine thought the date was going to be a disaster, but I charmed her with my humor and dancing skills. We ended up having a great time. We dated seriously for about two years, and when my enlistment was about to end, I was ready to propose to her. I knew I was going to move back to Louisiana to be closer to my family, and I really wanted Christine to come with me.
On April Fools’ Day 1971, I told Christine’s best friend that I was going to ask her to marry me. I was only kidding at the time, but five days later, I really did pop the question—and she told me no. In fact, she rejected my proposal at least ten times. Christine didn’t want to marry me because she knew how much I loved children. She had been previously married, and her first husband left her because she didn’t think she could have children because of an underlying medical condition.
“Hey, I know someone, and by that I mean the Almighty,” I told her. “If God wants us to have children, then we’ll have children.”
Well, my pleading finally won Christine over and we were married on April 7, 1971, by the justice of the peace at the courthouse in Berlin, Massachusetts. I was so poor that I couldn’t buy her an engagement ring or wedding band, so during the ceremony, I put a cigar band on her finger.
“Hey, look, put the cigar band on your finger,” I told her. “It’s what we say to each other that matters, not what you put on your finger.”
While you ladies wipe away the tears from your eyes, let me tell the men out there how to keep a marriage intact for forty-five years. Keep your mouth closed and your checkbook open, boys! A cigar band really isn’t enough! It didn’t take me long to realize that marriage puts a ring on a woman’s finger and two rings under the man’s eyes. Hey, in India the men don’t know their wives until the day they’re married. Let me tell you something: that’s the case everywhere in the world, Jack!
Joking aside, Christine and I have enjoyed a wonderful life together. We’ve been married for nearly a half-century, and we’ve lived in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas. We even spent parts of seven years living in Germany while I was stationed there with the army.
Despite Christine’s initial concerns about not being able to have children, the Lord blessed us with two wonderful kids. Our daughter, Trasa, was born in Landstuhl, Germany, on August 30, 1975, and our son, Scott, was born at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, on December 17, 1978.
Shortly after we were married, a military doctor diagnosed Christine with having Asherman’s syndrome, which is a rare condition that causes scarring on her uterus; more than 95 percent of her uterus was covered in scars. The condition can cause infertility, miscarriages, and severe pain. Christine underwent a procedure in July 1973 to remove the scarring, and she became pregnant with Trasa a little more than a year later.
We were so happy to have children of our own; they truly are God-given blessings. As it says in Psalm 127:3–5: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”
In June 2014, after forty-three years of marriage to Christine, I wanted to do something really special for her. I realize the sacrifices she made during my military career, when she spent so many years away from her family and friends. After I left the army on January 31, 1993, Christine realized I wasn’t happy living in Hollytree, Alabama, where we had decided to retire. She knew I wanted to be closer to my family so I could hunt and fish with Phil and his sons.
When Phil offered me a job at Duck Commander in 1999, Christine agreed to sell our house and move back to Louisiana. I thought she was seriously ill because she’d once told me she would never live in my home state again. When I was stationed at Fort Polk near Leesville, Louisiana, she hated living there. She didn’t like the hot weather, high humidity, and mosquitoes—or Phil. But she knew that living closer to my family would make me happy, and she was willing to make that sacrifice for me.
In hindsight, it was one of the best things we ever did. If I hadn’t moved back to West Monroe, Louisiana, Duck Dynasty would have never happened—at least not for me. The show’s producers and directors would have been forced to try to build a hit show around Willie and Jase, and I’m sure we can all guess how that would have turned out.
In the first Duck Dynasty episode of season four in 2013, Phil and his wife, Kay, renewed their wedding vows after forty-nine years of marriage. They’d been together since Kay was fourteen years old and were married by a justice of the peace, like Christine and me. So on their forty-ninth anniversary, their kids thought it would be great to give Kay the wedding she always dreamed of having.
My job on their wedding day was to keep them distracted, so everything could be set up for the surprise ceremony at their house. Well, I took them on a trip down memory lane. I took them back to their first house and to the tree on which they’d carved their initials together when they were teenagers. When we returned to their house, everybody was waiting for them. Their son Alan married them again, and I was Phil’s best man. It was a beautiful ceremony.
As my forty-third wedding anniversary approached, I thought it would be nice to give Christine the wedding she’d never had. When you decide to reaffirm your wedding vows, you have to ask yourself this question: Would you do it all over again? Would you make the same decision and choose your honey as your life partner? There’s no doubt in my mind that Christine was and always will be the one woman for me. Talk about a match made in heaven.
I wanted to make Christine’s surprise wedding something really special. Her favorite musical group is the country duo Brooks & Dunn. Unfortunately, Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn split up in 2010, so they couldn’t sing at our wedding. I decided to do the next-best thing: I recorded a song with Brooks for a six-song EP that I gave Christine as a wedding present. I called the EP Me and My Smokin’ Hot Honey. The EP contains a duet with Brooks and me singing, “Can’t Take the Swamp Outta the Man.” I flew to Nashville and sang my part at a recording studio. Brooks had already sung his lines during an earlier recording session, and producers worked their magic putting them together. The song is about how no amount of money could change my love for Christine. There just ain’t no ’mount of money that can change me and my smokin’ hot honey, Brooks sings.
The other songs on the EP include: “How Much I Love You,” “Would You Marry Me Again,” “His And Hers,” “Faith, Hope And Love,” and “If You Can’t Dig That.” Hey, there were a lot of people who helped me write and compose this love letter to my wife. Ashley Howard Nelson, Brandon Ray, Marcel Chagnon, Nathan Chapman, James Slater, Zach Harris, the Mauldin Brothers, and Jacob Lyda wrote the songs. My daughter-in-law, Marsha Robertson, sang one of the songs, and Jessica Andrews, Ally Moore, Macy Jae, and others also performed them. Ashley and Greg Droman produced the EP. Without their invaluable help, the EP would have never happened.
My wedding renewal day finally arrived on June 3, 2014, and we held the ceremony on the front lawn of my son’s house in West Monroe. All of our family and friends were there, and it was a great big party. When Christine walked down the aisle, I surprised her by playing “Can’t Take the Swamp Outta the Man” for the first time. She couldn’t believe Kix Brooks recorded a song for her! Brooks and Tricia Yearwood were even kind enough to film personal messages for her.
When it was time to exchange our vows a second time, I pulled out a cigar band.
“You’re not doing this again? Are you?” she asked me.
“Hey, Dad, I have your ring,” said my son, Scott, who was my best man.
After more than four decades of marriage, I finally slipped a diamond ring onto Christine’s finger. Hey, if it were up to me, Christine would still be wearing a cigar band on her finger. After forty-three years of marriage, why would we want to change our luck now?
But again, it wasn’t about the ring or cigar band. It was about the words we said to each other. Once again, we promised to “have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.” My love for Christine is even stronger now than the day I met her.
Hey, people ask me all the time about the secrets to having a healthy, lasting marriage. They’ll ask me, “How can you be married to the same woman for so long? How do you make it work?” The first thing you have to understand is that marriage is a lifetime commitment, according to the Bible. Too many people are getting married nowadays for the wrong reasons. They figure if the marriage doesn’t work out, they can fix things in divorce court. That’s not supposed to be how it works.
The Bible says marriage is meant to be a special covenant between a man, a woman, and God. In Matthew 19:3–9, the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” Jesus told them of God’s purpose for marriage: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Hey, marriage isn’t easy. It’s certainly no walk in the park. It is a long, winding road full of difficult choices, selflessness, and service to each other. At the same time, it’s a journey full of blessings, joy, and hope. Marriage is about sacrifices—like the ones Christine made for me—and about constant devotion to each other. Look, no one is perfect. Everyone has bad days, yells at his or her spouse, and is selfish at times. Learn to say I’m sorry and apologize. Despite our imperfections, God created husband and wife to steer each other in His direction.
What’s the best recipe for a strong marriage? The most important thing to do is to maintain your friendship with your honey. Look, you probably wouldn’t have asked your husband or wife to marry you if he or she wasn’t your best friend. Friendship is the foundation of every relationship. Christine was my best friend when I asked her to marry me, and she’s still my best friend today. We love spending time together and experiencing things with each other.
Hey, a marriage won’t last if you don’t laugh together. Make each other smile and have fun together. Find out what interests both of you and enjoy those things with each other. Make laughing, smiling, and crying tears of joy integral parts of your relationship.
You also need to make sure that you pay attention to your honey. Love means attention. Don’t get so caught up in your career and hobbies that you neglect your spouse. One of the hardest things for young couples to do is juggle the day-to-day chaos of their lives. They spend so much time shuffling their kids through car pools, baseball practices, and dance recitals that they don’t have time for each other.
Hey, don’t wait until the next power failure to have a candlelight dinner with your honey. Take time to do sweet things for him or her. Buy her a dozen roses or write him a love letter. If your marriage is going to grow, you have to find time for each other.
The Good Lord knows I’ve enjoyed the first forty-five years of my marriage, and I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life with Christine.