Ken and Colette Santucci were married by a reluctant priest. As the couple had only met six months earlier, the dedicated man of God expressed his doubts that they knew each other well enough to enter into the sacrament of matrimony.

It must have been a prompting of the Holy Spirit that caused him to forge ahead despite his reservations.

This summer, the Santuccis will celebrate their 51st anniversary. They’ll bask in the love and well wishes of their 16 children, who range in age from 27 to 50. None of the children was adopted. None was the product of a multiple birth.

A year ago the Santuccis marked their golden anniversary by renewing their wedding vows in a ceremony at their home parish, St. Bartholomew’s Church in Long Beach, Calif., where Ken is the leader of extraordinary ministers of holy Communion. Colette is a lector.

The couple told the Register how raising a family of such great size — not to mention helping with 23 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren — made for a busy and challenging five decades. Every child played a musical instrument in school. Fourteen of the 16 were placed in programs for high academic achievers. One had Down syndrome. Most were involved in scouting, programs mom or dad often led, and six boys became Eagle scouts. Most went to college, some getting multiple degrees.

“You can’t raise them by yourself,” Colette says. “Nobody can do that by themselves. Always with God. God will provide.”

Pressed to share some specific bit of advice, Colette recommends that couples “talk about the important stuff before they’re married. Talk about what you value and what you want out of life.”

For the Santuccis, that meant children. They decided before their marriage that they wanted 12. But a doctor’s examination two weeks before the wedding day revealed an irregularity in Colette’s capabilities. “He told me I was liable never to have any children,” she says.

“I sat down with Ken and told him, ‘I know you want a lot of children. It would break my heart, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to marry me because of this,’” she recalls. “We cried together and he said, ‘If we can’t have kids, we’ll adopt some. We’ll take whatever God gives us.’”

“I think I got pregnant on our wedding night. It was never a problem.”  

Faith and Family

Throughout the kids’ childhoods, the Santuccis made a practice of attending Mass as a family, though the process of getting ready to leave usually began two hours in advance.

“You find everyone’s shoes the night before,” says Colette. “That eliminates the biggest problem.” 

To couples who might consider taking turns going to church, leaving one spouse at home to watch the kids, or bringing children into a church’s cry room, Colette says: Don’t. “Either way,” she explains, “the kids never learn how they’re supposed to behave in church.”

Colette recommends that families with children sit together in the front pew during Mass. “They can see everything going on. Whisper to them during Mass, tell them about what the priest is doing,” she adds. “They’ll understand everything that’s happening before long.”

Ken, for his part, is open about the faith that has been the foundation of his life as a husband and father.

“I believe that love multiplies with each year, with each child, with each time you have marital relations,” he says, then adds an aside: “I said that on television and my kids could not believe I said it.

“The child is the fruit of your love,” says Ken. “With each child your love is growing because you’re sharing it that much more. Marriage is designed to teach you how to love. When you’ve generated this much love, accepting another child is easy.”

Contraception? “You can’t say, I have to control the number of children or I’ll be in the poorhouse,” he says. “You have to say, ‘If God wants that child, he’s going to provide for us.’ Don’t restrict your life.”

He points out that, through the years, personal prayer has been an important part of life for both of them. “I do pray every day,” he says. “Colette talks directly to God all the time. I have to work at it more.”

He says the spiritual reading he does each morning, as well as his ministry as a parish lector, both nourish his prayer. “The more you read the Word of God, the more easily the words come to you when you’re praying.”

The Santuccis are thankful that Ken was able to support the family through his 48-year career as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry. But the family budget was often tight.

“We didn’t have new stuff. We still don’t,” says Colette. “The furniture is worn, but the cupboard had food in it. Occasionally the bills got ahead of the money.”

“The thing is to know the difference between a want and a need,” she adds. “There were lots of things the kids wanted that they never got. Things were not the basis of our life. People were.”

Listing names and numbers of children, grandchildren, and now a great-grandchild, Colette says, “That’s our wealth. We have a legacy for eternity.”

That kind of wealth has sustained them through bad times as well as good. A serious auto accident during one pregnancy left Colette bedridden for five months; another crash occurred the day before she delivered one child.

For years, Ken rode his bicycle four miles to work so that Colette could have the one family vehicle (yes, a van). Then, too, the exercise had its side benefits. “I was healthier when I was 55 than when I was 35,” says Ken.

But he was also hit by a bus once while on his bike. His pelvis was broken and he underwent months of hospitalization and physical therapy.

“It hasn’t always been sweetness and light,” Colette says. “We’ve had more ups than downs. Some of the downs have been big downs. Periodically I’d get very angry with God. I’d yell at God and say, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ He’s always given us the strength to work through it and be stronger because of it.”

Strengthened and Sanctified

The Catechism teaches that the sacrament of matrimony “signifies the union of Christ and the Church” (No. 1661). “It gives spouses the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ has loved his Church; the grace of the sacrament thus perfects the human love of the spouses, strengthens their indissoluble unity, and sanctifies them on the way to eternal life.”

One challenge that has called for openness to God’s grace: handing on the faith to children who don’t always want to accept it. “We weren’t always successful,” Colette admits. “A few of them have left the Church.”

How does a faithful Catholic couple deal with that kind of heartbreak?

“I could say I’m not going to have anything to do with them, or I could take heart that they still have a belief in God and try to live that out,” says Colette. “If I were to cut them off from my love, then we’re never going to have any chance of getting them back to the Church. The only way to get them back is with love.”

One thing that both of them will say is that every good marriage is a partnership.

“One hundred percent partnership,” Colette says. “In the mornings, when I would be nursing a baby, he would get breakfast going and change diapers. At night, he would bathe them and I would dry them.”

Adds Ken: “We went into this partners for life.” 

And that’s how they plan to stay — till death do they part.

Barry Michaels writes from

North Syracuse, New York.