50 years together, but only riding seriously together - on a tandem - since '07. Getting there was a long and interesting process, at least to us. I'll talk a little about it as it might be of interest to others.
When I met her, my future wife was seriously asthmatic and couldn't walk between 1st and 2nd in downtown Seattle without stopping to catch her breath a couple times. If you're not familiar with Seattle, that's probably an 18% grade. I wanted her go be a permanent life partner and I've always been an outdoor kind of guy so of course I had to fix that. I'm an engineer type, so I fix stuff. She was totally amenable. No fun being asthmatic. We started with short neighborhood walks and over the months worked up to trail hiking. After a year or so of that, I took her above 5000' in the Cascades and she was hooked for life. If you want to see God, just go up there 'cause that's where she lives.
We gradually increased our hiking until we were doing yearly 10-day unsupported backpacks in the mountains. That went on until I turned 50 and realized that I was starting to need more regular exercise, so we both bought bikes. She only rode on MUPs while I restarted road riding. She had maybe half my watts, so riding together wasn't an option for a while, but she gradually got stronger so that we could ride our singles together. That ended when she got run over.by a 1-ton flatbed. After that, she was too terrified to ride her single on the road, so she went back to the MUPs.
I'd been doing Sunday group rides with a fun group for about 10 years by then, so I suggested that we buy a tandem and then both ride with the group. She said, "I can't keep up with you." I replied, "On the back of my bike you can." After a couple years of doing weekday rides on the tandem, we did our first group ride and she was hooked. So that's how we coped with being two different people who both liked the same thing, particularly being together.
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