A graduation date spawning half a century of marriage: - Ron ’70 and Fran Pytko

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A graduation date spawning half a century of marriage: - Ron ’70 and Fran Pytko

Ron ’70 and Fran Pytko at the Golden Pioneers Reception at Homecoming 2025.

A week after they had met at a wedding, came Ron’s graduation from what was then Utica College – a milestone event he wanted Fran there for, and a moment that would become the couple’s official first date.

Catching a movie. Getting some ice cream. Grabbing a drink. Going out to dinner.

But how many couples can claim a Utica graduation as one of their first dates?

Ron ’70 and Fran Pytko met on May 16, 1970, Fran’s 21st birthday, while the two were separately attending a wedding of Ron’s next-door neighbor. He was there with his father while Fran was there with her mother, who knew the groom’s parents. It was early in the day. Ron had a First Communion party to attend and Fran had work - waitressing an evening wedding reception. So while the two wouldn’t be dancing into the night, Ron wasn’t about to miss his chance and asked for her phone number.

“He said he would call in a few days,” remembers Fran. “but within an hour, he was calling my house while I was trying to get ready for work.”

They agreed to meet after the weekend.

They’d go for drives (she had a new Karmann Ghia convertible, he had a ’57 Chevy station wagon with no floor on the passenger side) and get ice cream, but with Fran needing to be ready for work in the morning, neither felt like they had officially gone on a “first date” yet.

But then, a week after they had met at the wedding, came Ron’s graduation from what was then Utica College – a milestone event he wanted Fran there for, and a moment that would become the couple’s official first date.

“The ceremony was outside in a field and the weather was nice,” Ron said. “I asked her to go to my house for a party to celebrate after, where she met most of my family.”

“We left the party and then went to a bar in Yorkville for pizza,” Fran adds.

They were both intrigued by each other and began seeing each other daily. Within a month of Ron’s graduation, the couple were engaged.

“A few days before Ron proposed, he didn’t call me and when I called him, he didn’t answer. I remember thinking that was odd,” Fran recalls.

“Then I called her and asked her to come to my house for lunch,” Ron explains.

She did, and he proposed. A few days later, the couple went to pick out an engagement ring together.

It wasn’t long after graduation that Ron, with a BA in History, interviewed for teaching jobs. With a glut of applicants and few open slots, it was a path that didn’t work out. But work is work and Ron soon took on a position at Utica Leather in the New Hartford Shopping Center, while Fran began working as a nurse at the Marcy Psychiatric Hospital.

Ron heard about the Federal exam for government positions and taking it, received an offer to work for the Social Security Administration – a role that would require training in New Jersey just three months before their wedding.

“Luckily, most of the wedding plans were done and I finished what wasn’t,” Fran said.

But it was a role that would last him a lifetime, working at the Syracuse Social Security Office from a week prior to the wedding up until he retired in 2005 after 32 years of service. Fran worked in doctors’ offices in more than 30 years as an office nurse and then as a medical biller, firmly planting the couple in Syracuse.

They describe their wedding as “a typical Polish wedding,” held at St. John’s Church in Utica on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend in November 1971. They then danced the day away at Union Hall in New York Mills, which today is apartments in the village.

“There was a lot of drinking, eating, and dancing the polka,” Ron says. “I think everyone had fun.”

“Afterward, when Ron and I left, we went to his house to change and then and drove to our apartment in Syracuse,” Fran adds. “He was unsure if he could get time off for a honeymoon, so we didn’t plan one. He did take a few days off, though.”

It’s a marriage that has lasted more than 54 years, each with its own ups and downs, and Ron and Fran say there’s no particular secret to matrimonial longevity other than facing the challenges that come working through them together.

Though more than five decades have passed since Ron’s graduation from Utica, the couple still makes their way back to the area monthly.

“I love reading the free Greater Utica magazine and Mohawk Valley Living, so we always pick them up,” says Ron of their visits back to the old stomping grounds.

“We usually stop at Roma Deli on Bleecker Street, then Caruso bakery, and possibly Holland Farms for Half Moons,” Fran adds. “And, of course, there’s the occasional visit to Pulaski Meat Market.”

Ron ’70 and Fran Pytko sit on a bench on a sunny day during Homecoming 2025.

They duo returned to campus in Fall 2025 for Homecoming & Alumni and Family Weekend, where Ron’s Class of 1970 were among those honored by the institution as part of the Golden Pioneers. As they took in the sights and sounds of the modern-day Utica campus, it was hard not to notice just how much has grown in the decades since that official first date at graduation.

“It certainly is bigger.”