Speaker 1: The originals. This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 2: The Clark County Marriage Licensed Bureau in Las Vegas is
Speaker 2: about as far from the glitz and glamour of the
Speaker 2: Strip as you can get. But for one night in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, this blanned government office in the County
Speaker 2: Courthouse was home to one of the wildest shows in town.
Speaker 2: On Thursday August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five, hundreds of
Speaker 2: young couples from all over the United States flocked to
Speaker 2: Las Vegas, desperate to get married before the clock struck midnight.
Speaker 1: Why the rush?
Speaker 2: Just hours earlier, President's Lyndon Johnson issued a surprise executive order.
Speaker 2: With the war escalating in Vietnam, the army needed more soldiers.
Speaker 2: Lbj's executive order said that as of midnight, you would
Speaker 2: no longer get special treatment for the Vietnam draft by
Speaker 2: getting married. The surprise announcement set off a panic. Getting
Speaker 2: drafted in nineteen sixty five was seen as a straight
Speaker 2: shot to the front lines in Vietnam, but there was
Speaker 2: still hope. If you could somehow get married before midnight
Speaker 2: local time, you might be in the clear. The problem
Speaker 2: was finding a place to get hitched on such short notice.
Speaker 2: Nearly every state required blood tests or a waiting period
Speaker 2: between getting a marriage license and actually getting married. Every state,
Speaker 2: that is, except Nevada. At nine thirty pm on August
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, Justice of the Piece James Brennan, returned from
Speaker 2: conducting a late night wedding at the Dunes Hotel to
Speaker 2: find a mob scene at the Clark County Courthouse. There
Speaker 2: was a long, snaking line of fifty couples waiting to
Speaker 2: get married, and the crowd was growing fast. Most of
Speaker 2: the brides and grooms to be came from California, but
Speaker 2: some couples had flown all the way from New Jersey,
Speaker 2: New York, and Pennsylvania, frazzled parents in tow. Judge Brennan
Speaker 2: had never seen anything like it. On a normal Thursday,
Speaker 2: his office might issue eight or ten marriage licenses, But
Speaker 2: over the next couple of hours, in what can only
Speaker 2: be described as quote an orgy of officiating, Brennan and
Speaker 2: his harried clerks issued more than one hundred and fifty licenses.
Speaker 2: The judge personally presided over sixty seven weddings in one
Speaker 2: hour and fifty minutes, which must be some kind of record.
Speaker 2: With minutes to go before midnight and ordered his secretary
Speaker 2: to put her typewriter cover over the clock. He didn't
Speaker 2: want to know if the last few I dos were
Speaker 2: exchanged before or after twelve. As far as the state
Speaker 2: of Nevada was concerned, everyone got married on August twenty sixth.
Speaker 2: The Vietnam Era was an incredibly stressful time to be
Speaker 2: young in America. If you were nineteen or twenty, it
Speaker 2: didn't matter what your plans were, getting a job, starting
Speaker 2: a family. A draft board could send you halfway around
Speaker 2: the world to fight, and you might never come home.
Speaker 2: It was stressful for young women too. Imagine you're an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old girl fresh out of high school and
Speaker 2: your boyfriend calls out of the blue and says, marry
Speaker 2: me tonight, or they're going to send me to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: What would you do? Would you set aside your own
Speaker 2: plans and dreams to protect someone you love. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to Very Special Episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Danish Schwartz, and this is Night of one thousand Weddings.
Speaker 3: We are back. She's Danish Schwartz, He's Aaron Burnett, I'm
Speaker 3: Jason English. This is the very Special Episodes podcast. How's
Speaker 3: everybody doing doing well? How about y'all?
Speaker 1: I'm doing good.
Speaker 2: Have we spoken since we had a new addition to
Speaker 2: the very special episodes Family.
Speaker 1: No, we have not.
Speaker 3: Please introduce. Introduce.
Speaker 2: There's a little baby. There's an Arthur Carmel. So if
Speaker 2: you hear any crying in the background, it's the co
Speaker 2: host who's mad that he doesn't get a chance to
Speaker 2: participate in this banter.
Speaker 3: We're going to write some baby vo parts into some
Speaker 3: of these episodes. Put us in touch with his reps.
Speaker 2: We do live in La so he does already have
Speaker 2: an agent, manager, talent agent, modeling wrap.
Speaker 1: By the way, great name, great name for his future career.
Speaker 2: Artie Karns.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love it.
Speaker 3: Have you gotten all this social media handles and everything
Speaker 3: that you need to reserve?
Speaker 2: I think I did. I couldn't get the Gmail, but
Speaker 2: I got something close. Isn't that crazy that that's how
Speaker 2: fast it is. I think as soon as we landed
Speaker 2: on the name, I was like, Instagram, Gmail, It's the
Speaker 2: best gift I'll ever give him.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: I got the Gmail. I'm squatting on the Gmail to
Speaker 3: the thirteenth birthday President.
Speaker 1: You are a man now.
Speaker 3: Perfect. Speaking of La, Saren and I just met up
Speaker 3: for a couple of days in La. We made a
Speaker 3: start in Venice at a I guess you call it
Speaker 3: a creator space called the Lighthouse, and Saren and I
Speaker 3: gave a nice talk to a very cool group of people.
Speaker 1: Great crowd.
Speaker 3: Hopefully they'll have us back. Hopefully we picked up some
Speaker 3: new listeners to this podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I really liked that crowd. I was going down there.
Speaker 4: I used to live in Venice. It was a nice homecoming,
Speaker 4: but that crowd was amazing. I wish they had spaces like.
Speaker 1: That when I lived there.
Speaker 3: Speaking of big cross country trips, we've got a few
Speaker 3: of them in this episode.
Speaker 2: Oh God, a frantic road trip to save someone's life.
Speaker 2: Pretty much, most of us have no idea what it's
Speaker 2: like to live under the shadow of the draft, that
Speaker 2: any day a letter could show up in the mail
Speaker 2: ordering you to report for duty. For most people, getting
Speaker 2: shot at in a foreign country isn't on their bucket list.
Speaker 2: For the first few years of the conflict in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: only small numbers of American troops were needed, but that
Speaker 2: changed in nineteen sixty four following reports of North Vietnamese
Speaker 2: torpedo boats attacking an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 2: In response, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing
Speaker 2: the President to send conventional troops into Vietnam. The Draft
Speaker 2: was designed to most efficiently distribute America's manpower. Every American
Speaker 2: man between the ages of eighteen and twenty six was
Speaker 2: eligible for the Draft. Not everyone was sent overseas to fight, though.
Speaker 2: There were all sorts of built in deferments available ways
Speaker 2: to legally get a reprieve. If you were in college,
Speaker 2: for example, you could get a student deferment. If you
Speaker 2: were a doctor or a farmer, you could get an
Speaker 2: occupational or agricultural deferment. If you had kids to raise,
Speaker 2: you could get a hardship deferment.
Speaker 5: The whole purpose of the deferments in general, right, is
Speaker 5: to create a system of selective service. That's what selective
Speaker 5: service means. So some men are needed more in uniform,
Speaker 5: and some men are needed more as civilians, or at
Speaker 5: least needed less in uniform. That's true across the board
Speaker 5: in US history.
Speaker 2: That's Amy Ruttenberg, a historian who researches and writes about
Speaker 2: the Draft. Amy's also really interested in all of the
Speaker 2: ways that people tried to get around the draft, legal
Speaker 2: and otherwise.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: There are all kinds of stories that circulated about people
Speaker 5: going to Mexico to have knee surgery to ruin their
Speaker 5: knees rather than fix them, People purposefully starving themselves to
Speaker 5: get under the weight limit so that they would be
Speaker 5: for f or not eligible physically, people refusing to shower
Speaker 5: for weeks leading up to their induction exams so that
Speaker 5: they would be found mentally unfit.
Speaker 2: According to one study, more than sixty percent of draft
Speaker 2: eligible men actively took some type of measure to avoid
Speaker 2: being drafted, or at least to avoid being sent to
Speaker 2: the front lines. Army infantry was the most dangerous job,
Speaker 2: so a lot of men enlisted in other branches of
Speaker 2: the military that had lower odds of being sent to Vietnam,
Speaker 2: like the National Guard or even the Navy. Others did
Speaker 2: everything they could to qualify for a deferment, which were
Speaker 2: relatively easy to get at first, but as the fighting
Speaker 2: escalated and the army needed more men, the rules started
Speaker 2: to tighten up.
Speaker 5: There's a pattern that's established through all the wars where
Speaker 5: the United States has used a draft, and that is
Speaker 5: at the outset, when there are relatively high rates of volunteering,
Speaker 5: or when the US hasn't needed quite as many men
Speaker 5: in uniform, the deferments are pretty easy to get. And
Speaker 5: then as it becomes harder to get people to enlist
Speaker 5: or the military simply needs more men, those deferments get
Speaker 5: closed off one by one.
Speaker 2: That's what happened in nineteen sixty five. Two years earlier,
Speaker 2: John F. Kennedy had signed an executive order saying that
Speaker 2: married men would be drafted last, only after all eligible
Speaker 2: single men were used up. Kennedy's announcement even triggered a
Speaker 2: miniature marriage boom.
Speaker 5: Marriage rates were seven point five percent hire for twenty
Speaker 5: year olds and ten point nine percent higher for twenty
Speaker 5: one year olds between October sixty three and June sixty
Speaker 5: four than they had been during the previous two years.
Speaker 5: In other words, there's a spike in twenty and twenty
Speaker 5: one year olds getting married.
Speaker 2: With the marriage deferment. If a young person really didn't
Speaker 2: want to fight in Vietnam, they didn't have to starve
Speaker 2: themselves or go to Mexico and get reverse knee surgery.
Speaker 2: They just had to find a woman. At least that
Speaker 2: was the case until August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 6: I was going to work one night, and I worked
Speaker 6: a late afternoon shift at the phone company, and I
Speaker 6: heard on the radio that Lyndon Johnson had changed the
Speaker 6: rules for getting a deferment and that you had to
Speaker 6: be married before midnight that night.
Speaker 2: That's Candy Rydell. In nineteen sixty five, Candy was an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old student at El Camino Junior College in
Speaker 2: southern California. Candy was dating a guy named George Warren.
Speaker 2: George was different from most of the other guys at
Speaker 2: El Camino. He was an intellectual, a free thinker. George
Speaker 2: didn't approve of Candy being in a sorority, too conventional,
Speaker 2: too bourgeois, so they started going to anti war protests instead.
Speaker 6: I remember my mother was horrified because she had long hair,
Speaker 6: which wasn't long hair at all.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: It was just like he could combit and it came
Speaker 6: to his bottom of his ear, you know.
Speaker 7: But she never liked anybody that was with.
Speaker 2: George had his whole life planned out, and central to
Speaker 2: that plan was not getting sent to Vietnam.
Speaker 6: That was his life, you know. He was a student
Speaker 6: and an anthropologist student, so that had a big future.
Speaker 6: And he figured that he would go to school and
Speaker 6: then go to graduate school, and then go on to
Speaker 6: get a doctorate, and then by the time he was
Speaker 6: twenty eight, he would have to get married just to
Speaker 6: avoid the draft.
Speaker 2: Candy and George had only been dating for three months.
Speaker 2: They never talked about marriage, or if they had, it
Speaker 2: was something in the way distant future. But when Candy
Speaker 2: heard lbj's announcement on the radio, she felt her world
Speaker 2: turn upside down. If the marriage deferment was gone, what
Speaker 2: if the college deferment was next, what would stop George
Speaker 2: from being drafted. The second Candy got to work, she
Speaker 2: called George's house and left a message with his mom.
Speaker 2: She said that she would do whatever he wanted, whatever
Speaker 2: was necessary to keep him safe.
Speaker 6: After a couple of hours, I got a phone call
Speaker 6: that said there was an emergency that I had to
Speaker 6: go home. I remember telling the girl next to me,
Speaker 6: I think I'm getting married.
Speaker 2: So as it happens, Candy wasn't the only young woman
Speaker 2: in southern California getting an urgent phone call in the
Speaker 2: middle of the afternoon. Eighteen year old Claudia was working
Speaker 2: as a bookkeeper at the Jolly Roger Inn near Disneyland
Speaker 2: when her boyfriend David called out of the blue.
Speaker 8: So Claudia is at work, she gets a phone call
Speaker 8: from David saying, Hey, there's this executive order that was issued.
Speaker 8: We need to get married.
Speaker 2: That's Ashton Avila, a filmmaker. Ashton made a short film
Speaker 2: called I Got You Babe. That's a fictionalized account of
Speaker 2: Claudia and David's adventures that night in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: Ashton says that Claudia was in the same boat as Candy.
Speaker 2: She'd only started dating David that summer, and suddenly she
Speaker 2: was faced with a huge decision. Sensing Claudia's hesitation, David
Speaker 2: pushed harder. So you don't love me, he asked. Claudia,
Speaker 2: you just want me to die over in Vietnam. Of
Speaker 2: course she loved him, and of course she didn't want
Speaker 2: him to die anywhere. She just needed a minute to think.
Speaker 2: But David said if they wanted to get married before midnight,
Speaker 2: they had to leave right now.
Speaker 8: After the announcement, people realized the old only place in
Speaker 8: the US that you could get married without a blood
Speaker 8: test or a waiting period was the State of Nevada.
Speaker 8: So people all over the country who knew that they
Speaker 8: wanted to make it in for this draft deferment fled
Speaker 8: to Nevada.
Speaker 2: David's friend had a car and the plan was to
Speaker 2: drive to Vegas, which was at least five hours away.
Speaker 2: Completely overwhelmed, Claudia tried to explain the situation to her boss,
Speaker 2: who was less than sympathetic. He was from the World
Speaker 2: War II generation and had strong feelings about so called
Speaker 2: draft dodgers.
Speaker 8: She said, I need to go because I need to
Speaker 8: go and get married, and he said, well, if you leave,
Speaker 8: don't bother coming back, because you don't have a job
Speaker 8: here anymore.
Speaker 2: As if Claudia's decision wasn't hard enough now her job
Speaker 2: was on the line, but there wasn't time to think.
Speaker 2: David needed her help, and that's all she knew.
Speaker 8: She left the job. They went to get married. They
Speaker 8: got in their friend's car and they started driving towards
Speaker 8: life Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Candy and George also had their sights set on Vegas,
Speaker 2: but they bought plane tickets. Actually, George's mom bought the
Speaker 2: plane tickets. She was dead set on getting George married
Speaker 2: before midnight and keeping him out of harm's way.
Speaker 1: When Candy and.
Speaker 2: George got to the airport, it was full of other
Speaker 2: young couples with the same determined and slightly dazed look
Speaker 2: in their eye.
Speaker 6: It was Bonanza Airlines and they had to put on
Speaker 6: three extra airplanes because there were so many couples going
Speaker 6: to Las Vegas right then to get married.
Speaker 7: So that was a big deal.
Speaker 2: For Amy Ruttenberg, the historian, hearing about these young couples
Speaker 2: dropping everything and racing to Vegas drives home just how
Speaker 2: anxious this entire generation was about being drafted.
Speaker 5: Well, it certainly shows how serious these couples were about
Speaker 5: avoiding this. I mean, if the news drops and within
Speaker 5: twenty four hours you're on a plane to Las Vegas
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty five, right, that's pretty serious.
Speaker 2: When we asked Candy if she had any second thoughts
Speaker 2: as she was boarding a Bonanza Airlines flight to Vegas
Speaker 2: to marry a guy she'd only known for three months,
Speaker 2: she said no.
Speaker 6: There wasn't any hesitation. It was just like, well, this
Speaker 6: is something we have to do. It's different, but let's
Speaker 6: do it, you know, So I didn't worry. I called
Speaker 6: my mother before I left, and she said, are you pregnant,
Speaker 6: because that's my mother.
Speaker 2: Claudia, on the other hand, wasn't convinced. The long car
Speaker 2: ride to Vegas gave her way too much time to think.
Speaker 2: David's friend brought his fiance, and the other couple bickered
Speaker 2: and fought in the front seat the entire trip. How
Speaker 2: did Claudia know that she and David wouldn't end up
Speaker 2: like them? Was she really ready to be somebody's wife?
Speaker 8: I think she was torn between She really, you know,
Speaker 8: loved David and she wanted to be with him, and
Speaker 8: she didn't want him to go to war. Like obviously
Speaker 8: she said yes for a reason, but I think she
Speaker 8: also was battling with the idea of what does it
Speaker 8: mean to be a woman in nineteen sixty five and
Speaker 8: what does it mean to get married and have your
Speaker 8: life change it that way? And the expectations of you
Speaker 8: as a wife and a mother, And then all of
Speaker 8: a sudden it's like, hey, you have, you know, six
Speaker 8: hours to decide if you were going to give all
Speaker 8: that up.
Speaker 2: As Claudia, David, Candy, and George set off for Vegas,
Speaker 2: they had two burning questions racing through their minds. One,
Speaker 2: would they actually make it to Vegas on time to
Speaker 2: get married by midnight, and two was all of this
Speaker 2: completely crazy. On August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five, Larry
Speaker 2: Fugate was a twenty year old cub reporter for the
Speaker 2: Las Vegas Review Journal, the city paper. It was close
Speaker 2: to nine pm on a Thursday and the journal office
Speaker 2: was almost empty. Then the phone rang.
Speaker 8: And he gets this phone call that somebody says, Hey,
Speaker 8: there's something going on at the courthouse. And Larry says
Speaker 8: to like one of the last reporters there, being like, hey,
Speaker 8: there's something going on at the courthouse that maybe we
Speaker 8: should go and look into. And they were like, I'm
Speaker 8: going home. If you want to go do.
Speaker 1: That, you can.
Speaker 2: So Larry, being an eager beaver, grabbed his notebook and
Speaker 2: high tailed it for the courthouse. He couldn't believe what
Speaker 2: he saw. There were people everywhere. Police were on duty
Speaker 2: trying to control the increasingly jittery crowd. When Larry realized
Speaker 2: that people had flown to Vegas from all over the
Speaker 2: country for a last minute draft reprieve, he knew that
Speaker 2: he'd stumbled on the best story in Vegas that night.
Speaker 8: I remember him describing he goes there were women with
Speaker 8: soda pop cans in their hair, the curling and he goes,
Speaker 8: and men who look like they walked off a construction site.
Speaker 8: And it was just this kind of chaotic group of people.
Speaker 8: And he went and he interviewed a bunch of the
Speaker 8: people there.
Speaker 2: There was a tall young man who'd flown all the
Speaker 2: way from Pittsburgh with his sweetheart and his parents. He
Speaker 2: admitted that he'd only known his future wife for four weeks,
Speaker 2: but said they'd discussed marriage before. Once emotions were running high.
Speaker 2: Most of the young women were either giddy or in
Speaker 2: tears or both. The young men paced around chain smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 2: One twenty year old kid told Larry quote, sure, I'm
Speaker 2: not ready to be married, but I'm not going to
Speaker 2: fight in some dirty jungle. The parents were on edge too.
Speaker 2: When Larry tried to interview one father, he was shouted away.
Speaker 2: The man didn't want his son's name in the papers
Speaker 2: as a quote. Draft Dodger.
Speaker 8: Did have their opinions of what was right and what
Speaker 8: was wrong. And also, you know, we were closer to
Speaker 8: that World War II victory right where America was the
Speaker 8: big hero and you know, or one of the big heroes,
Speaker 8: and you know, the pride of being like, you know,
Speaker 8: you fought the Nazis, you like, did good for the world,
Speaker 8: all of that, and then to go into this war
Speaker 8: that was so muddy about the intention of it, and
Speaker 8: to have those veterans from World War Two be like,
Speaker 8: you fight for your country, We're proud to be American,
Speaker 8: all this stuff, and then to have this war that's like, wait,
Speaker 8: this isn't the same situation, But how do I explain
Speaker 8: that to an older generation.
Speaker 2: One of the Clark County police officers turned to larry
Speaker 2: and equipped. It seems romance is now spelled v I
Speaker 2: e T NAM. Inside the marriage license bureau, things were
Speaker 2: getting chaotic. Lydia Cartwright was on duty that night. She
Speaker 2: remembers getting frantic phone calls from all over the country.
Speaker 2: Men were calling from New York in Chicago asking Lydia
Speaker 2: to marry them right over the phone. She politely declined.
Speaker 2: Most of the couples didn't have wedding rings, and none
Speaker 2: of the girls wore wedding dresses. Someone showed up with
Speaker 2: a veil and several of the brides passed it around,
Speaker 2: recycling it for their rushed ceremony with the Justice of
Speaker 2: the Peace Meanwhile, more and more couples were arriving in
Speaker 2: Vegas by plane and by car, trying to beat the
Speaker 2: midnight deadline.
Speaker 8: The feeling of Las Vegas that night was cars were
Speaker 8: driving down the boulevard and people were yelling at the
Speaker 8: cars and saying, the courthouse is that way, Like people
Speaker 8: in the streets were pointing them in the direction because
Speaker 8: they knew what everyone was doing.
Speaker 2: Candy Riddell and George Warren landed in Las Vegas around
Speaker 2: nine thirty. They had no idea if the courthouse was
Speaker 2: even open. They jumped in a taxi and the driver
Speaker 2: insisted on stopping at every single quickie, wea chapel along
Speaker 2: the strip.
Speaker 6: They must have had a deal with them, you know
Speaker 6: that he's tried to sell people on the way, and
Speaker 6: we had to get out and go into some of them,
Speaker 6: and we're just panicky, you know. We got to get
Speaker 6: to the We got to get to the courthouse. And
Speaker 6: then when you get to the courthouse it was closed.
Speaker 6: They had to close for an hour to take lunch.
Speaker 6: This was like at ten o'clock at night, though, you know,
Speaker 6: so they were preparing for a big influx and then
Speaker 6: so there was just jam a hallway jammed of people
Speaker 6: waiting for the courthouse.
Speaker 1: To open again.
Speaker 6: I think it's just that we were all nervous that
Speaker 6: we were going to get married in time.
Speaker 2: Candy and George didn't know it, but they were some
Speaker 2: of the lucky ones. All across America, thousands of other
Speaker 2: couples like them were frantically trying to get married too,
Speaker 2: but with little luck. In Elkton, Maryland, for example, which
Speaker 2: at one time was the most popular marriage mill on
Speaker 2: the East Coast, police and city officials fielded hundreds of
Speaker 2: phone calls. They tried to explain that Maryland outlawed quickie
Speaker 2: marriages years ago, but that didn't stop throngs of young
Speaker 2: couples for making the late night drive. Elkton police told
Speaker 2: newspapers that out of state couples quote ran around like
Speaker 2: a bunch of ninnies trying to circumvent the forty eight
Speaker 2: hour waiting period. They even tracked down a local judge
Speaker 2: who had the authority to waive the waiting period, but
Speaker 2: only it turned out if one of the parties was
Speaker 2: a Maryland resident. At the night court in New York City,
Speaker 2: a rush of young couples begged the judge to marry
Speaker 2: them before midnight, but he sent them packing. In Texas,
Speaker 2: a reporter caught up to a nineteen year old couple
Speaker 2: who were turned away from a county clerk's office because
Speaker 2: of the three day waiting period. The dejected young man
Speaker 2: accused the reporter of being a spy for the draft board, saying, quote,
Speaker 2: if I give you my name, I'd be drafted in
Speaker 2: the morning. Nevada was one of the only places left
Speaker 2: in the country where a quick wedding was legal, but
Speaker 2: the window was closing there too. Back in Vegas, Candy
Speaker 2: and George made it to the front of the line
Speaker 2: around eleven o'clock. They got their marriage license and then
Speaker 2: had to wait in another anxious line for the Justice
Speaker 2: of the Peace. Judge Brennan, performed a short ceremony in
Speaker 2: his office, but Candy says it was all a blur.
Speaker 2: She doesn't remember a word. Before she knew it, she
Speaker 2: and George were back out on the streets of Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: two newly weds.
Speaker 6: Well, it was just not my intention to have a wedding,
Speaker 6: you know, I wasn't I never thought about being a bride.
Speaker 6: You know, if it happened one day, it would happen,
Speaker 6: so it was all still a kind of a swirling around, and.
Speaker 7: It was just I don't know.
Speaker 6: We were just in a daze.
Speaker 3: I think for a long time.
Speaker 2: Claudia and David had an even wilder ride. They drove
Speaker 2: all the way from la but it took longer than
Speaker 2: they thought. The whole drive, Claudia was going back and
Speaker 2: forth in her mind, should she do this? Was she crazy?
Speaker 2: She decided to let fate decide. If we don't make
Speaker 2: it by twelve, that design that you wasn't supposed to
Speaker 2: marry David. They pulled up to the courthouse at exactly
Speaker 2: the stroke of midnight.
Speaker 8: They were like, we're not going to make it. We're
Speaker 8: not going to make it, and the car pulls up,
Speaker 8: they get out of the car, they run, and as
Speaker 8: they're going to the entrance to the courthouse, people are
Speaker 8: leaving the courthouse in tears and they're crying and they're upset,
Speaker 8: and they say, what's going on, and they say, we
Speaker 8: didn't make it in time. It's too late. We didn't
Speaker 8: make it in time. And Claudia is like, well, that's it,
Speaker 8: we didn't make it in time, and David says, no,
Speaker 8: if they're going to tell me. No, They're going to
Speaker 8: tell me to my face.
Speaker 2: Ashton admits that this next part sounds like a scene
Speaker 2: from a cheesy movie, but she swears that it's true.
Speaker 8: So they get to the door and the woman is
Speaker 8: literally putting like the padlock, like locking the door, and
Speaker 8: he tells her, I don't want to go to Vietnam.
Speaker 8: I don't want to die like I need to get
Speaker 8: married tonight, and she just took pity on him and
Speaker 8: let the two of them in, and they were the
Speaker 8: last people to be married in Clark County that night.
Speaker 2: Judge Brennan didn't leave the Clark County Courthouse until after
Speaker 2: two am. Too wired to sleep, he went for a
Speaker 2: beer at the back bar of the Horseshoe Casino. George's
Speaker 2: mom booked Candy and him a room at the Sands Hotel,
Speaker 2: but Claudia and David didn't have anywhere to go after
Speaker 2: their midnight wedding. They wandered into an old school casino
Speaker 2: called Diamond Jim's Nevada Club, and Claudia dropped a nickel
Speaker 2: into one of the slot machines. Ding ding went the
Speaker 2: lights and out poured twenty dollars in change enough to
Speaker 2: afford a low budget honeymoon at the Hacienda Hotel and Casino.
Speaker 8: They got married and they stayed in a hotel that night,
Speaker 8: But it was also kind of a very somber feeling
Speaker 8: of what did we just do? I imagine it's like that
Speaker 8: moment in the Graduate where they're sitting in the back
Speaker 8: of the bus and they have to realize, oh shit,
Speaker 8: oh what just happened.
Speaker 2: Less than twelve hours ago, Claudia and David were just
Speaker 2: two kids living in Anaheim, with no real plans for
Speaker 2: the future. Now they were two married people with no
Speaker 2: real plans for the future. All they knew was that
Speaker 2: David was safe for now, at least. We read a
Speaker 2: lot of old newspaper articles while researching the craziness of
Speaker 2: August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five. There was Larry Fugate's
Speaker 2: story for the Las Vegas Review Journal, of course, but
Speaker 2: every major newspaper in the country also ran an article
Speaker 2: about the midnight marriage madness. Of all the wedding stories
Speaker 2: we read, though one stood out as the most improbable
Speaker 2: and perhaps the most magical of them all. The details
Speaker 2: were first reported in the Saint Joseph Gazette, in Saint Joseph, Missouri.
Speaker 2: But to tell it, we need to take you back
Speaker 2: to that fateful night when everything changed for one young couple.
Speaker 2: Dan and Nancy Wilson started dating in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2: Dan was a senior at Benton High School in Saint Joseph, Missouri,
Speaker 2: and Nancy was a freshman.
Speaker 7: Well, actually, we've known each other almost all of our life.
Speaker 7: We grew up only about a block and a half
Speaker 7: away from each other, and so there was a few
Speaker 7: years of difference between us in age, so I was
Speaker 7: always ahead of her, And it wasn't until the teenage
Speaker 7: years that I finally started noticing this pretty little girl
Speaker 7: down the street and she caught my eye, and thanks
Speaker 7: kind of took off from there.
Speaker 9: Well, we'd kind of been noticing each other in school,
Speaker 9: and then during the summer spent a little time over
Speaker 9: the swimming pool and happened to notice him there, And
Speaker 9: one weekend we went to a county fair and he
Speaker 9: asked me if I would like to have a ride
Speaker 9: home with him, and been together pretty much ever since then.
Speaker 2: By the time Nancy graduated, Dan already had the rest
Speaker 2: of their lives planned out. They'd own a funeral home.
Speaker 2: Of course, let me explain. After high school, Dan attended
Speaker 2: community college and got a part time job at a
Speaker 2: local funeral home, and.
Speaker 7: The gentleman that owned the funeral home came to him
Speaker 7: and said, you know, I got this funeral home, but
Speaker 7: I have three daughters and none of them have any
Speaker 7: interest in the business. So for the right young man,
Speaker 7: if you want to get your license, come back and
Speaker 7: work here at the funeral home. There could be a
Speaker 7: bright future.
Speaker 2: Dan was all in, but to take over the business,
Speaker 2: he had to attend mortuary school first and get his
Speaker 2: mortuary license. Dan and Nancy were deeply committed to each other,
Speaker 2: but to realize their bright future as funeral home owners,
Speaker 2: they'd have to spend a whole year apart mortuary school
Speaker 2: in Dallas, Texas, five hundred and fifty miles from Saint Joseph.
Speaker 2: Being a part would be hard for the young lovebirds,
Speaker 2: but during Christmas break in nineteen sixty four, Dan made
Speaker 2: it official. He asked Nancy to marry him, and she
Speaker 2: said yes, of course. They set a date for September fourth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, exactly a week after Dan would graduate.
Speaker 2: Everything was falling into place. Dan went back to Dallas.
Speaker 2: Nancy stayed in Saint Joseph, and they dreamed of their
Speaker 2: September wedding.
Speaker 7: The plan was to get married at our church whenever
Speaker 7: got back home. Invitations were out, just immediate family, her
Speaker 7: family and mine, just a small we'll get together, and
Speaker 7: everything was all set out and we were looking forward
Speaker 7: to that.
Speaker 2: Dan says he didn't think much about the draft at
Speaker 2: the time. He knew kids from high school who were
Speaker 2: serving in Vietnam, and he didn't have anything against the war.
Speaker 2: In fact, Dan says he would have been proud to
Speaker 2: serve his country, but all he was thinking about in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five was finishing school, getting that mortuary license,
Speaker 2: and marrying his sweetheart. Then came August twenty sixth LBJ
Speaker 2: signed the executive order saying that after midnight the marriage
Speaker 2: to Ferment was going away. Dan heard the news about
Speaker 2: the rule change around five PM, but he didn't really
Speaker 2: see how it affected him. It wasn't until later that
Speaker 2: night that some of Dan's classmates from Missouri gave him
Speaker 2: something to worry about. If any of them were drafted
Speaker 2: right out of mortuary school, they were up a creek. Apparently,
Speaker 2: the licensing process in Missouri followed a strict timeline. After
Speaker 2: you got your mortuary degree, there was a one year preceptorship,
Speaker 2: and then you took the state boards. If Dan and
Speaker 2: his friends were sent to Vietnam, the process could be
Speaker 2: delayed for years, or they might even have to repeat
Speaker 2: mortuary school when they got back.
Speaker 7: And we thought that was a tremendous waste of time
Speaker 7: and money. And I had already borrowed the mighty to
Speaker 7: go to school to start with the first time. So
Speaker 7: I was on a pretty tight time frame anyway already,
Speaker 7: and we were looking to get married, so I didn't
Speaker 7: need anything that might potentially interrupt me completing my preceptorship,
Speaker 7: passing my state boards, and then getting license. So we're
Speaker 7: having this discussion with my classmates, and I decided that
Speaker 7: this may be an issue here for us in the
Speaker 7: state of Missouri if we don't follow through on a
Speaker 7: time frame.
Speaker 2: What's crazy was that Dan and Nancy were all set
Speaker 2: to get married in a little over a week. They
Speaker 2: even had their marriage license already. The fact that lbj's
Speaker 2: announcement came when it did during the extremely narrow window
Speaker 2: between the end of school and marriage too perfectly legit
Speaker 2: draft deferments was wild. Now Dan and Nancy's entire plan
Speaker 2: was in jeopardy. But what could they do about it.
Speaker 7: One of the guys suggested, well, you know, you guys
Speaker 7: have already got your license and everything. You could go
Speaker 7: ahead and get married over the phone, and then we
Speaker 7: could you school from there and have your church wedding later. Well,
Speaker 7: we all laughed about that and thought it was funny,
Speaker 7: and then we pondered it a little longer.
Speaker 2: Wait a second, could that actually work? Can two people
Speaker 2: really get married over the phone? He needed to talk
Speaker 2: to Nancy. It was now ten thirty pm, ninety minutes
Speaker 2: until midnight. Nancy, it turned out, was at a bridal shower,
Speaker 2: her bridal shower when Dan called in the middle of
Speaker 2: her party, yapping about a telephone wedding. She thought he
Speaker 2: was kidding, But after Dan explained everything, Nancy had no choice.
Speaker 2: She was on board.
Speaker 7: Well, we had to find out first of all if
Speaker 7: it was legal and what could be done about it.
Speaker 7: And eventually we got to a magistrate judge in Saint Joe, Missouri,
Speaker 7: Margaret Young was her name, and she said, yes, it's.
Speaker 2: Legal, but there was a catch.
Speaker 7: You'll have to have the parties together. She said, I'll
Speaker 7: have to be with Nancy and You'll need to be
Speaker 7: hooked up in Dallas with some officient in Dallas. Well,
Speaker 7: I'm thinking, okay, Margaret Young, the judge is on a phone,
Speaker 7: Nancy's on a phone, the minister in Dallas is on
Speaker 7: a phone, and I'm on a phone. Now we got
Speaker 7: a four way conference call. Let's make it happen. And
Speaker 7: so we started moving to that direction. And now we're
Speaker 7: talking about it's getting ten thirty eleven o'clock at nine,
Speaker 7: so sneaking up on that midnight hour. And Margaret Young says, no, no, no, Dan,
Speaker 7: you have to be in the presence of the minister.
Speaker 7: You can't just be on the phone. And I have
Speaker 7: to be in the presence of Nancy.
Speaker 2: So let's get this straight. If Dan and Nancy were
Speaker 2: going to pull this off, if they were really going
Speaker 2: to get married by telephone from different states, Dan had
Speaker 2: to find a minister in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Like now.
Speaker 2: Dan and his friends grabbed the Yellow Pages, flipped to
Speaker 2: the church's section, and started making phone calls. At eleven
Speaker 2: fifteen pm, someone finally picked up doctor G. N. Goldstin,
Speaker 2: Associate pastor of the East Dallas Christian Church was in
Speaker 2: the shower when he fielded Dan's random call.
Speaker 7: I said, here's our situation, here's what we'd like to do,
Speaker 7: and I went through the whole background. I said, we
Speaker 7: have a judge at the other end who says this
Speaker 7: will be legallet but we need an efficient here. I
Speaker 7: explained the story, and he was compassionate and understanding. He said, okay,
Speaker 7: I help you out.
Speaker 2: Dan and his three friends jumped in a car and
Speaker 2: raced to doctor Goldstein's house.
Speaker 7: We had to scurry across Dallas to get to the minister,
Speaker 7: and by this it's now getting late at night, and
Speaker 7: the minister that we were talking to, he was in
Speaker 7: his pajamas when he answered the door.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, back in Saint Joseph, Nancy's bridal shower was quickly
Speaker 2: being converted into a wedding. The bridesmaids snapped into action.
Speaker 10: One of the girls her parents owned a floor's shop,
Speaker 10: so that's how we were able to get a bouquet
Speaker 10: at the last minute, and they grabbed my dress and
Speaker 10: it's just kind of chaos. They're all changing my clothes
Speaker 10: and making the bouquet, and somehow it all worked out.
Speaker 2: At eleven thirty eight pm, Nancy stood in her parents'
Speaker 2: kitchen in Saint Joseph, wearing her beautiful white wedding dress,
Speaker 2: bouquet in one hand, phone receiver in the other. One
Speaker 2: of Nancy's bridesmaids held up a framed photo of Dan
Speaker 2: so they'd feel a little closer to each other. Magistrate
Speaker 2: Margaret Young was in an upstairs bedroom with Nancy's pa parents,
Speaker 2: officiating from a separate line two states away in Dallas.
Speaker 2: Dan said, I do witnessed as law required by an
Speaker 2: ordained stranger. In pajamas, Dan and Nancy made the midnight
Speaker 2: deadline with a few minutes to spare. As a wedding present.
Speaker 2: Dan's friend Jerry offered to pay doctor Goldstin for the
Speaker 2: long distance charges. It was thirteen dollars. Only when Dan
Speaker 2: hung up the phone did it hit him. He was
Speaker 2: finally married to his favorite girl, but she was five
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty miles away.
Speaker 7: It was not at all what I had anticipated my
Speaker 7: wedding night was going to be. I'm going home by myself.
Speaker 7: You know, That's not when it's supposed to be. But
Speaker 7: the last thing that we said to each other, and
Speaker 7: whenever we finished the phone call was I'll see you
Speaker 7: in two days, because two days later it was going
Speaker 7: to be graduation and she was coming.
Speaker 2: To Dallas later, the long distance newlyweds finally shared a
Speaker 2: first kiss and set off on their life together. As
Speaker 2: it turned out, the whole mortuary school thing was a bust.
Speaker 2: The older couple who owned the funeral home decided not
Speaker 2: to retire after all. Dan switched to a marketing career
Speaker 2: and never looked back. This August, Dan and Nancy Wilson
Speaker 2: will celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a long time in it. I've let him
Speaker 10: live that long.
Speaker 7: We are both so blessed and that we have each other.
Speaker 7: And somehow we knew from the very beginning that we
Speaker 7: were met for each other. It's just just so we've
Speaker 7: always been together. We don't know any different. We love
Speaker 7: each other, we cherish each other time together, So it's
Speaker 7: all good. It's all good.
Speaker 2: By one estimate, twenty thousand couples got married on August
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five. Not all of them ended
Speaker 2: as happily as Dan and Nancy's. Candy and George stayed
Speaker 2: together for five years. They moved to Eugene Oregon, so
Speaker 2: George could attend graduate school within a day's drive of
Speaker 2: the Canadian border. He never did get over that draft thing.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy, George fell in love with a woman
Speaker 2: he met in Mexico, and he and Candy divorced, no
Speaker 2: hard feelings. Candy says they remained good friends until George
Speaker 2: passed away in twenty eighteen. Does she regret marrying George
Speaker 2: so suddenly in nineteen sixty five, would she have done
Speaker 2: anything differently?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 3: I think I did the right thing.
Speaker 6: He had definite desires to avoid being in the service
Speaker 6: at that time, you know, and I believed in him,
Speaker 6: and you know we were in love. You know, you
Speaker 6: do stuff then, right?
Speaker 2: What about Claudia and David, Well, they almost didn't make
Speaker 2: it either. Claudia's family was so ashamed that she'd married
Speaker 2: a quote draft dodger that they told her not to
Speaker 2: tell anyone. Two days later, Claudia had to attend her
Speaker 2: cousin's wedding.
Speaker 8: And as she was walking her down the aisle, no
Speaker 8: one knew that Claudia was married, and she was crying
Speaker 8: and she goes and I'm sure it was interpreted as
Speaker 8: tears of joy for this wedding, but I was crying
Speaker 8: because I was watching her have the wedding I was
Speaker 8: never going to get to have, which was very, very heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Claudia and David tried to make it work though they
Speaker 2: had two kids together, but after six years they split up.
Speaker 2: That was nineteen seventy one. Fast forward to twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Because they had kids together, Claudia and David never completely
Speaker 2: left each other's lives. In twenty eleven, their first great
Speaker 2: grandson was born in San Diego. Claudia and David made
Speaker 2: the drive down from La together and got to talking.
Speaker 2: David told Claudia that even after forty years, he never
Speaker 2: stopped loving her. Two months later they were remarried, but
Speaker 2: not in Vegas this time. When Ashton Avila was making
Speaker 2: her short film based on Claudia and David's story, she
Speaker 2: worried that Claudia's character would come across as weak. Clearly
Speaker 2: she wasn't ready to marry David that day in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five, but she did it anyway.
Speaker 8: I think there are different looks of what strength is
Speaker 8: for women, and that was a huge discussion we had
Speaker 8: when we were working on the film. Was at the end,
Speaker 8: would a strong woman walk away and not get married
Speaker 8: because she knows that she wants her own life, or
Speaker 8: would a strong woman sacrifice what she wants to save
Speaker 8: the life of somebody else? And I think that there's
Speaker 8: strength in both of those options.
Speaker 2: Like thousands of other couples, lives took an unexpected turn
Speaker 2: on August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five, Claudia decided to
Speaker 2: stand by David's side sixty years ago, and she's still
Speaker 2: there today. Happy sixtieth anniversary to all the gray haired
Speaker 2: couples out there who have LBJ to think or to
Speaker 2: blame for sending them scrambling to the altar all those
Speaker 2: years ago. You've shown us that there's truly no limit
Speaker 2: to the things we'll do for love.
Speaker 3: So we often say about these episodes that you know,
Speaker 3: this should be a movie, but I really mean it
Speaker 3: with this one. I think there's some real juicy roles
Speaker 3: for a lot of nice ensemble in this. Saren is
Speaker 3: our resident casting director. Did you happen to cast this one?
Speaker 4: I got to completely agree with you that this is
Speaker 4: film ready, Like Hollywood, take note. So here's just some
Speaker 4: casting suggestions. I started with the twenty something cub reporter
Speaker 4: from the Las Vegas Review Journal who was bouncing around
Speaker 4: that night covering everybody. I thought, for him, you wanted
Speaker 4: somebody fun, but yes, also somebody who feels like a journalist.
Speaker 4: So I picked Noah Sentino, that guy from the Netflix
Speaker 4: spy show The Recruit.
Speaker 1: He's kind of a floppy haired kid.
Speaker 2: I know him from the Netflix series To all the
Speaker 2: boys I loved before.
Speaker 4: Yes, there you go. Of course I should have mentioned
Speaker 4: that one. Yes, I thought he'd be good. And then
Speaker 4: so for the couples, I went with like, I wanted
Speaker 4: people who felt like the time period. I wanted them
Speaker 4: to have kind of like, you know, not Internet faces.
Speaker 4: So I went for Candy and George, the couple who
Speaker 4: flew on Bonanza Airlines. I went with Haley Stanfield for
Speaker 4: Candy and Finn Cole for George. Finn Cole, if you
Speaker 4: don't know him, he played Michael Gray, Polly's son from
Speaker 4: Peaky Blinders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know who I was kind of picturing as
Speaker 2: one of the boys, maybe just because he had like
Speaker 2: a minor part in Oppenheimer was Jack Quaid.
Speaker 1: Oh, I like that call.
Speaker 4: I also went with some World War Two era actors
Speaker 4: or at least their most recent parts have been that
Speaker 4: it picked some guys from Masters of Air. So I
Speaker 4: had Austin Butler also aka Elvis. I had him playing David,
Speaker 4: and then claw Aaudia, the couple who drove to Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: I thought, for Claudia, go with Florence Pugh. I thought
Speaker 4: that would be a nice couple. Florence Peugh Austin Butler.
Speaker 4: I can imagine them in that car ride, stuck with
Speaker 4: the other couple, crying and everything.
Speaker 1: So I was like, Okay, now the other one I
Speaker 1: picked with.
Speaker 4: The Wilsons, Dan Wilson and Nancy Wilson, not from Heart
Speaker 4: the Band. Now Dan Wilson, I went with Callum Turner,
Speaker 4: who played Bucky Egan from Masters of War. And then
Speaker 4: for Nancy, I went with Sydney Sweeney. I thought they
Speaker 4: can nail that as a relationship, and I really loved them.
Speaker 4: And then all the details like when she's sitting there
Speaker 4: holding up the photo of Dan so she can feel
Speaker 4: closer to him at the wedding.
Speaker 1: Oh Mike, my heart melted at that.
Speaker 4: And then the fact that the end when they get
Speaker 4: back together, Oh my god, I lost it.
Speaker 1: I loved this whole series.
Speaker 3: I'm in the fandango app trying to get tickets already.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh my god, Yes, did you guys have any
Speaker 4: very special characters you pulled from the step?
Speaker 3: So I didn't want to play favorites with any of
Speaker 3: the actual couples, So I'm trying to pick from the
Speaker 3: people who helped them along their way. So whether it's
Speaker 3: the judge in Missouri and the minister in Texas, maybe
Speaker 3: they could share the honor the secretary who covered the
Speaker 3: clock with her typewriting cover. That's that's great, But I'm
Speaker 3: going to give it to the fast thinking people of
Speaker 3: Bonanza Airlines who in real time were able to decide
Speaker 3: we need more flights. Can you imagine that today? Like
Speaker 3: you're at an airport and someone just decides that, yes,
Speaker 3: we got a lot of people going to Vegas for
Speaker 3: some reason, get the other planes out of the hangar
Speaker 3: a different time.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, what about you, Dana, did you have one?
Speaker 2: I think it is the secretary for me because I
Speaker 2: can imagine that scene in the movie when she goes
Speaker 2: midnight not on my time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I loved that lady from the Clark County Courthouse
Speaker 4: who undoes the lock. So they can go in and
Speaker 4: get married. I just love the image of her undoing
Speaker 4: the lock. I was like, yeah, she's like out there
Speaker 4: pad locking in the courthouse and she's like, okay, I'll
Speaker 4: let you and last ones to get married in the
Speaker 4: night of a thousand weddings.
Speaker 3: A lot of civil disobedience on display here.
Speaker 4: And I love to took place in Vegas. It felt
Speaker 4: so right that it was Vegas. I mean, this couldn't
Speaker 4: happen in like Cincinnati. I guess you could, but I
Speaker 4: mean this is not the same.
Speaker 2: It's the prequel to Anora that we all want.
Speaker 3: Totally very special episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 3: Today's episode was written by Dave Russ. If you like
Speaker 3: this one and you're enjoying the NCAA tournament, go check
Speaker 3: out an episode Dave wrote for us last May. It's
Speaker 3: called The Shot. It's about the only three point shot
Speaker 3: in basketball history that saved thousands of lives. Day Scott
Speaker 3: Severn more in the pipeline for this stretch special thanks
Speaker 3: to filmmaker Ashton Avila, who shared her invaluable research and
Speaker 3: contacts from making her short film I Got You Babe.
Speaker 3: Go check that out. This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz,
Speaker 3: Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Our super producer is Josh Fisher.
Speaker 3: Editing and sound design by Chris Childs, Mixing and mastering
Speaker 3: by Chris Childs. Additional editing by Mary Doo, original music
Speaker 3: by Elise McCoy, bactchecking by Dave Rus and Austin Thompson.
Speaker 3: Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English.
Speaker 3: You'd like to email the show, hit us up at
Speaker 3: Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. Our plan is
Speaker 3: to have new episodes every Wednesday from now into July,
Speaker 3: so we will see you back here next week. Very
Speaker 3: Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts