By Amanda M. Wimmer
of The Northwestern

Throughout their 25 years of marriage, the Judy and Bruce Bradley have been thrown a curve ball, or two.
Just one year after Bradleys were married in 1982 at Oshkosh’s St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Bruce was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease the affects the central nervous system.
But that didn’t stop the Bradleys.

Since Bruce’s MS diagnosis, the Bradleys have, like many married couples, traveled to nearly every state, both earned master’s degrees and they had a child, who is now a 16-year-old high school student.

Because of his MS, Bruce Bradley had to quit his teaching job in 1984, just two years after the couple married. His health deteriorated slowly and for the past five years, he’s had to use a wheelchair. Judy Bradley, who is a registered nurse, is her husband’s primary caretaker.

Still, Judy said one of her only challenges in taking care of her husband is her fast paced lifestyle.

“When I want to go somewhere it takes extra time to get him loaded and unloaded into the van and things like that,” she said.

So when the couple learned recently that their 25-year marriage was never official because the paperwork somehow slipped through the cracks, the Bradleys took the news as just one more bump in the road. They dug in, tracked down witnesses and went to court to make sure that their marriage was recognized by the state – just one more challenge for a couple who has yet to meet a challenge they couldn’t overcome.

Bruce Bradley is at the point now where he can’t get in or out of his wheelchair on his own because the lower half of his body doesn’t work. He also has very bad eyesight, a side effect of MS, and his speech is slurred.

“The speech doesn’t bother me. When you get older, things happen and change,” she said.

As a couple, they still communicate fine, they say.

“You kind of adapt to it,” Bruce Bradley said.

And the Bradleys have. Judy said that Bruce’s disability has never stopped them from going anywhere or doing anything. Trips to Yellowstone, cruises and hiking trips are just a few of the things the couple have done together.

“We travel more than a lot of people do,” she said.

In February, when their daughter wanted to take a trip to Costa Rica, the Bradleys were thrilled for her.

While helping her daughter apply for a passport, Judy Bradley inquired, on a whim, about seeing her own marriage license, something she had never seen.

To her surprise, there wasn’t one.

“They couldn’t find it anywhere,” Judy Bradley said. “I was very frustrated and I was to the point where I wanted to cry.”

The Winnebago County Register of Deeds keeps marriage licenses permanently on file, which means either the Bradley’s original marriage license was lost in transit in the 1980s or was never sent to the county.

But that was just the beginning — she had no idea how much work it would be to find out what happened to the piece of paper she and her husband applied for so many years ago. She also had no clue she’d ever have to question whether she and her husband of so many years were married.

Tracking down witnesses to their marriage and affidavits from their church to prove they were actually married became a project for Judy Bradley.

“Other people of course thought it was funny,” she said.

But to the Bradleys, who postponed celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary on May 29, it wasn’t funny.

In order to be granted a delayed registration of their marriage certificate, a Winnebago County judge had to decide whether there was enough proof the couple was ever married. On Tuesday the Bradleys got the OK to go ahead and apply for that delayed registration of marriage certificate from the county.

Shortly after the phone call came in, Judy Bradley said to her husband through a smile: “I think we’re married again.”

“I was worried there for a second,” he answered.

And they chalk the glitch up to another bump in the road.

“We go with the flow and we have a good time,” Judy Bradley said.

SOURCE

Bookmark It

Hide Sites