Yust the two of us: Stan and Barbara Boreson have kept each other laughing for nearly 50 years
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It's a wonder Barbara Boreson doesn't yust go nuts!
Nearly half a century after tying the knot with her Scandihoovian sweetheart, Stan, the yokes yust keep coming.
Stan Boreson was the first local TV star here 50 years ago, including 12 years as host of “King's Klubhouse” with Stan and No-Motion, his slothful basset hound.
It's been more than three decades since Stan taught us to pick, pick, pick up our rooms and that no joke is too clean or too corny.
But the Boresons — he's 76, she's 69 — still have lessons to teach about how to approach life with zest and affection and how to get the most out of marriage, through good times and not so good, which for them was bankruptcy.
Recent studies funded by the National Institute on Aging verify what long has been suspected: Staying active leads to vigorous golden years. A good attitude and sense of humor can add a decade to life. After a serious financial misstep in the 1980s, Stan and Barbara Boreson will work the rest of their lives — which may turn out to be the best thing for them, she says.
They lead tours, mostly of senior citizens around the country and the world, with her as the organizer and him as the accordion-playing good cheer. Word of mouth keeps their buses so full they don't advertise.
The business works because their marriage works. And that marriage is based on trust and mutual appreciation — for a good punch line.
When one of them dies, the other has vowed to go on with life and remarry, Barbara said recently in the Boat Street office of Stan and Barbara Boreson Tours.
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“If you marry again, will you stay in the house? And she says, 'Yes.'
“Well, will you sleep in our bed? And she says, 'Yes.'
“Well, will you let him use my golf clubs? And she says 'No.'
“And he says 'Why?' And she says, `Because he's left-handed!' ”
Together, they lean back and roar with laughter. Barbara's delight gives no clue as to how many times she may have heard this joke. “Oh-h-h,” she says in mock dismay, “isn't that awful?”
Tours flavored with fun
The Boresons borrowed a tired old green church bus to launch their first tour 16 years ago. True to his old television show, in which he poked fun at his and Seattle's Scandinavian heritage, Stan had a friend dress up in a plaid shirt, awful pants and a Viking hat with horns.
“Boreson Tours leaving for the Canadian Rockies,” Driver The Terrible shouted after creaking open the door. The line of 40 shocked travelers didn't budge.
“W-Where will we put our luggage?” an older woman finally asked.
“On your lap,” the driver said, at which point Barbara came running to assure everyone the real bus — nice, clean, new — was right behind.
“That should have killed our company right there,” she sighs.
Instead it set the tone.
On bus tours, the groups play “Bug Bingo.” Passengers put their names in squares taped to the windshield, and the first name splatted wins a prize.
“It's very high class, I can tell you,” says the Boresons' best customer, Lois Anderson, 76, an Alaskan tug-boat-company owner who just got back from her 18th Boreson trip.
On a tour of St. Louis, the Boresons started in the seediest section of town and pretended it was the best.
“All of it just adds to the fun,” says Anderson, who broke her hip seven years ago but sprang herself from the rest home as soon as she could to avoid hearing more complaints.
“This world is so big and there's so much going on,” she says. “I figure as long as I can get up in the morning, I must be OK.”
“Hear! Hear!” the Boresons would say.
Age isn't slowing them down
They've seen 90-year-olds who act like they're 50 and 50-year-olds who shuffle along with no spark.
“You see people who grow old and bitter and you think, what happened to you along the line?” Barbara ponders. “There's so much good that can be done from beginning to end of life, it's sad to let it waste away.”
Oh, now, Stan frets, we're getting maudlin.
Have you heard the one about the two Danes, two Norwegians and two Swedes who were left on a deserted island?
After a year, the Danes were partying and having a great time. The Norwegians were beaten to a bloody pulp, too stubborn to give in to each other.
“And the Swedes were still sitting back to back waiting to be introduced,” Stan says, his face glowing with joy.
“Isn't that terrible!!!!” says his chuckling wife.
The Boresons were not born married, as she suggests. They met when Barbara was still a student at the University of Washington.
He'd come to Kappa Kappa Gamma to date one of her sorority sisters. But the other girl was tardy and Stan got to talking to Barbara, who was on the phone desk because she'd been caught trying to sneak in one night after hours.
“She'd been naughty,” Stan says.
Hard as it is to believe, Stan was so quiet early in their marriage, Barbara came up with a scheme so she'd know his thoughts.
In the first week of New Year's, they write down all their goals for the coming year. Not just material goals, unless the car really needs to be replaced. Not just the 10 pounds she'd like to lose every year.
But real thoughts and dreams so they know what's on each other's minds.
“Then we'd know where things were coming from, and we'd push ourselves to make things happen,” she says. “For us, it strengthened our marriage to always talk everything out.”
Investment brings trying times
Their vows were put to a test in the early 1980s.
The Boresons say Stan trusted what turned out to be an untrustworthy investment partner.
Tears stream down her face as she tells this story. His fingers tap his chair arm.
After a lifetime devoted to being unusually good, of always trying to make people feel better, he contributed to something that hurt other people. The associate left town; the Boresons stayed. They lost everything, contested nothing.
“It was a terrible, terrible time in our lives,” she says. “We gave everything but our blood, and we would have done that, too. We were just sick about what happened.”
But they didn't lose their marriage.
“If you are involved in any part of this,” she told him, “I'm out the door. Otherwise, I'll work my heart out for you.”
And that's what she's done. She never lost faith in him. People often ask if Stan's really as nice as he seems, and her answer is quick: He's even nicer.
He's a good father to their two kids, who are Stan (“an incredible piano player”) and Ann (“a crackerjack real-estate salesperson” who's given them three “neat, neat grandkids.”).
He's a good man, Barbara says. He's worked hard all his life and done the very best he knows how to do. He is her best friend.
“Ditto,” he says, fidgeting. “Anyway ... let's get off of that.”
“Well, it's true.”
In between tours, Stan still entertains.
He tells funny stories about the early days of TV, including one about his Norwegian TelePrompTer, a blackboard with a hole in it so he could jot down a few notes around the camera lens.
Humor circa the 1960s:
“I call my girlfriend Hinges because she's something to adore.”
“What will happen if the boarding house blows up?” The Swedish Answer Man's response: “Roomers vill be flying!”
Stan remains a frequent entertainer anywhere lutefisk is served or where retirement-home dwellers seek clean jokes and a genuine good heart.
“I was just amazed,” he said the day after appearing at a luncheon for volunteers at the Foss Home. “One lady has been helping out with people there for 31 years!”
It's all in the attitude
Life is not more golden for the Boresons. They just choose to see the sunnier side.
You barely know each other when you marry, Barbara says, and it's amazing that you make a go of it.
“I express when I disagree with Stan very well,” she jokes, “and he expresses when he disagrees with me.”
But she can never stay mad at him, because he'll say something funny and then she has to turn her back and walk away so he doesn't see her laugh.
“I want to pout a little longer,” she says. “I want him to know that I'm upset.”
If a shared sense of humor truly is the most important trait in a good marriage, as she says, the Boresons might last.
There was this little boy who was in the narthex of a church and he was looking at this plaque, Stan begins. And the priest said, 'Yes, son, that's dedicated to all the people who died in the service.'
“And the little boy said, 'The 9:30 or the 11?' ”
Perfectly timed, perfectly clean, a warming ray of sunlight.
“Isn't that the cutest thing?” Barbara asks. “The 9:30 or the 11!”
Beside her, Stan yust beams.
“I think that's a killer.”
Sherry Stripling can be reached at sstripling@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2520.