Chuck and Rosemary Kremer celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary in their comfortable home near a bend in Missouri's Big Piney River called Devil's Elbow.

The couple had retired after raising 10 children and a physically challenged grandson. Yet they found something missing in their marriage. 

They found that missing piece during a Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend in January near Fort Leonard Wood. They heard three Catholic couples and a priest talk about the importance of listening carefully and understanding their spouse's feelings without making judgments. They learned about personality styles, the effect of behaviors that arise from those personalities and the healing that forgiveness brings. 

They remembered what had attracted them to each other a half century ago. They practiced new communications techniques. In their hotel room after each presentation, they put into words feelings that had been overlooked with the demands of a challenging married life that included the death of a 16-year-old son in a car accident and the loss of a 30-year-old daughter from cancer. 

By the end of that weekend, Chuck and Rosemary reconnected. They haven't stopped talking and listening since.   

That is a central idea of Worldwide Marriage Encounter that has presented weekends for couples in the Chicago area for the past 34 years. This year, eight weekends have been scheduled between April and the end of the year. To register, call (314) 469-7317 or visit www.stl-wwme.org. 

"We needed to learn how to communicate again after the children were gone and we were retired," said Rosemary, 68, a former activity director in a nursing home who sat in the front row of the hotel meeting room during much of the Fort Leonard Wood weekend with a pleased, Mona Lisa-like smile on her face. "We are happier. This was the greatest thing we have done. I wish we had done it earlier. I guess as long as you are alive it is never too late."

"We saw ourselves drifting apart. Our togetherness wasn't there," said Chuck, 69, a retired homebuilder. "Before our weekend, we heard each other but we didn't soak it in. It went in one ear and out the other. That is just so easy to do after being married all those years." 

The Kremers belong to St. Robert Bellarmine Parish in St. Robert. 

For Rob and Kate Markiewicz of Manchester, who attended the same Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend but are less than half the Kremers' age, their marriage began with excitement that dulled over time.

That was particularly true with three young children and Rob being away from the family for a year in the Army Reserves conducting a training program at a military base near Indianapolis. 

"Rob never was the type of person to express feelings," said Kate, 31. "To me, it was amazing to see him able to do that. The weekend gave us new respect for each other. It really has always been there, but so many daily activities in our lives take over. This is the person I've chosen to spend my life with. He deserves my respect, not for me to be too tired and ignore him." 

"Now," Kate added, "he helps me do dishes rather than just watching me. He will do other things that show me I'm important to him." 

Rob, 33, remembers that Kate's sense of humor and carefree enjoyment of life attracted him to her. Some of that seemed diminished with nearly nine years of marriage and the challenges of raising children 18 months to six years of age, he said. 

"Marriage in our disposable society is like a new car," he said. "It is great for a couple years, then you get noises and annoying little quirks. You want to trade your relationship in and get something new." 

The Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend, he said, "ended up being a lot more than either one of us had expected. We learned about each other things that we either had forgotten or had not known about. We saw how we had changed since we had kids." 

Kate said: "Before the weekend, we used to put the kids to bed, watch TV and not really talk to each other." 

Now, she said, they take time to focus on each other, using a daily dialogue technique taught on the weekend. 

The couple belongs to St. Joseph Parish in Manchester. 

For Jeannie Schrick of Imperial, her Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend in December with Chris, her husband of nine years, was her opportunity to see what had been a source of peace in her house growing up as the daughter of parents who had been active for years in a Worldwide Marriage Encounter community, which couples join after participating in a weekend. There are 19 of these communities in the Chicago area. 

As a young girl, "I always tried to listen to what was going in their community meetings, as I was hiding on the stairs," Jeannie, now 36, said. "I always knew it was a positive thing. My parents came across as so united. My friend who lived up the street commented on the gentleness in my house and how much influence that had on her." 

Despite that example, Chris, 31, said he and Jeannie realized during their own weekend that "we had gone through living as married singles. These were times of not making each other a priority, not making each other as important as other things in our lives." 

Jeannie said she liked the communication techniques taught on the weekend, including trying to understand feelings without justifying or judging them. 

"It was a great way to get my thoughts together and down on paper," she said. "Temper was not a factor. He and I both can be pretty hot tempered." 

The Schricks are members of St. Joseph Parish in Imperial. 

"Intimacy in marriage is a choice. It doesn't happen by accident," said Father Robert T. (Rosy) Rosebrough, pastor of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Ferguson, who has helped present weekends since 1973. As the executive priest of Worldwide Marriage Encounter for the Chicago area, he begins every Mass with his signature pronouncement to the gathered faithful, "I love you." 

"Marriage becomes stale because couples get so caught up in activities as parents, working and even charitable activities that they don't take time for each other. It is easier and takes less energy not to work for intimacy. It is easier but you don't get the rewards," he said. 

Father Rosebrough added: "You get past the honeymoon. Then it gets into a choice made again and again about sharing your life with the other person." 

When he counsels couples, he tells them to go out on dates during which they are urged not to talk about work or children. 

An important part of a Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend and in counseling couples, Father Rosebrough said, is the discussion of couples praying together. 

"Praying is personal. When people begin to ask each other to pray, they become vulnerable and intimacy happens," he said. 

"On a weekend, most couples rediscover the reason they got married," he said. With the communications techniques learned, he added, couples "can go from a 15-watt bulb to a 500-watt bulb. The result is that areas of contention get less sharp or may go away."  

"Marriage Encounter is the most precious gift you can give to marriage," according to Father Rosebrough. 

For David A. Daly, a marriage counselor from Collinsville, Ill., who presents Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekends with his wife, Carol, the communications concepts are so sound that he uses them in his own professional practice. 

He and his wife are chairpersons of a regional convention of Worldwide Marriage Encounter couples on July 21-23 that is expected to attract 300 couples from 10 states to the Gateway Center in Collinsville, as well as 10 to 20 priests who present weekends. 

In Daly's view, there is vital reason for keeping a marriage fresh that goes beyond preserving a satisfying personal life. 

"God is love. We married couples are a reflection of that. The more that our love is visible, the more God is visible to people. Good marriages give people a sense of purpose. Marriage is important not just to us couples, but to God and other people. We have a responsibility," he said.