Fifty-two years ago this week I married my best friend and true love.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to pause my big, ongoing ego trip and tell a few of the many wonderful stories about my longtime companion, Judy Rosee Harris, the woman who insured the success of my career with her steadfast support and has made me feel loved and cared for throughout the years.

I previously told the story of how we met on the University of Wisconsin football practice field after she accidentally audited a physical education class for coaching majors and was told to check out spring football.

What I didn't say at the time was that I was smitten even before I knew who this girl on the sidelines was. I had seen her each day for about a week and all I knew for sure was I had to meet her - somehow.

Once I did meet her and she agreed to go out with me, my fate was sealed. But it wasn't exactly love at first sight for Judy, whose main interest in dating in those days was to have someone to buy her dinner on Sunday night when the dorm cafeteria wasn't open.

Our first date was attending the second marriage of a friend's mother. It was fun and Judy agreed to go out again, this time for pizza on a Friday night. After picking her up, I asked if it was okay if we drive by my parents' house so I could introduce her to my family. She readily agreed.

She hit it off immediately with my mother, my sisters and my brother Bob, all younger than me. Dad was out of town and brother Richard was away at school. As we got ready to leave for dinner, without really thinking, I said, "Anybody want to go with us for pizza?" All three of the siblings present jumped on the invitation and off we went.

Years later, Judy told me that, as an only child, she was stunned when I invited Judy, Laurie and Bob to join us on a date. But, more important, she was impressed that I loved my family enough to want to include them, even on a date. It put me in a different light for her.

That night was the beginning of our relationship. We spent all of our free time together, meeting for lunch on campus, going out or hanging around my parents' house on the weekends and studying together in the evenings, either in person or on the phone.

I finally met the Rosees when they came to Madison for Parents' Weekend. She introduced me in the lobby of her dorm and, after a quick hello, I had to get to class. As I left, I gave her a peck on the lips and, as I walked away, I heard her dad say with some surprise, "You two are getting mighty cozy."

Much later, Judy told me her mother said she knew right away Judy was serious about me because "she had never dated a fat guy before." And I was only 165 pounds at the time.

One night, about six months after meeting, I was at home and Judy was at her dorm and we were both studying, talking occasionally but mostly just feeling like we were connected by that open phone line.

Finally, I picked up the phone and said, "Hey, we're spending all our time together. I think we should be engaged. What do you think?"

After a pause, Judy replied, "I guess so."

"Okay," I said, "I'll get you a ring."

That was my unromantic proposal and Judy's even less romantic acceptance. I was over the moon, though, that she was willing to marry me.

I had little money so I asked my mom if she had a ring I could use. She gave me her original wedding ring. I felt it was sentimental, but it was not very impressive, with only a very tiny diamond _ really a chip. But it had to do.

The next night, I picked Judy up at the dorm and gave her the ring in the car. We kissed and went for pizza. Then I dropped her at the dorm because I had to go to work at the newspaper at 10 p.m. Again, not the most romantic night.

We decided to wait to get married until both of us were out of school and we could afford to live independent of our parents. So it was a 2 1/2-year engagement.

Meanwhile, my dad couldn't figure out what to make of Judy. He kept saying, "She's awfully quiet. Is she okay?"

In our house, he wasn't used to quiet thinkers.

The two of them sort of tip-toed around each other for a while.

Dad had built a new home that was as grand as its address, 1 Park Lawn Place. It had a circular staircase in the entry hall, an indoor grill in the kitchen and a 30-foot high antenna attached to the back of the house because dad liked to watch late-night movies on the Chicago TV stations, 150 miles away.

Judy was hanging out at the house one weekend and we were both studying. I went to help mom with something and, when I came back to the living room, Judy was gone.

I walked out to the backyard and looked around. Finally, I looked up and there was Judy, sitting on the edge of the roof, reading her book. Judy has always loved climbing, often shinnying up trees and scaring the hell out of me in the early days of our marriage. She couldn't resist that antenna.

Just as I was about to ask her what she was doing up there, dad walked out into the yard.

Next thing I knew, he was climbing the antenna. I didn't know if he was mad at her for climbing up, worried about her or what. But the two of them sat up there on the roof for a long time, just talking. After that, Judy could do no wrong in my dad's eyes.

Judy has always taken care of the people around her, whether she knows them or not. And she expects them to do the same for her. Amazingly, more often than not, they do.

For a while, Judy's antics would embarrass me or put me on edge.

We would get a birthday cake or a big dessert in a restaurant and Judy would be walking around the room, sharing it with strangers.

We'd pass an older person walking in the rain or snow and Judy would insist we turn around and offer them a ride.

Stray dogs with collars had to be picked up and returned to their homes, no matter how smelly they were.

After a while, I realized this was one of the traits that made my Judy special and I learned to go with the flow and enjoy it.

There were plenty of odd moments, though.

After I started working for The AP in Chicago, we found an apartment on the North Side. Most days, I took a bus to the Elevated station at Loyola University's Chicago campus. Occasionally, Judy would drive me to the station, which was about five minutes away by car.

The first time she drove me, Judy pulled into one of the Loyola entrances to let me off. I kissed her goodbye and went off to catch my train.

As she attempted to back out, Judy drove the car over one of the 100-pound concrete turtle shells that lined the driveway. The rear of the car was off the ground and she couldn't go forward or back.

Fortunately, we had AAA and Judy went to a nearby pay phone (remember those) and called for help.

She was connected to a nearby service station and explained that she had gotten the car stuck "on a concrete gumdrop." The guy on the other end said, "This I have to see."

He arrived quickly, jacked the car up and got it off the stone which Judy had pulled into the driveway. "What do you want me to do with it now?" he asked, kidding. Judy says she told him, "I want my husband to see it, so can you put it in the trunk?"

When I got off the train that night, Judy picked me up and said, "I have to show you something."

I could see the back of the car was lower than normal and, when she opened the trunk and I saw the "concrete gumdrop" for the first time, I was speechless.

We had no garage at our apartment, so we parked the car on the street out front. A couple of days after acquiring the driveway marker, we came out to discover someone had drilled out the lock on the trunk, ostensibly to steal whatever was weighing down the rear of the car.

I would love to have seen his face when he opened the trunk and saw what was inside.

After that, Judy insisted we had to somehow bring the "gumdrop" into the apartment. We enlisted the help of Steve Brown, a friend who had played football and was a former Illinois high school heavyweight wrestling champion. The two of us carried it up a flight of stairs and placed it ceremoniously in front of the fireplace.

Judy placed a ceramic frog atop the "gumdrop" and that's where it remained when we moved to Indianapolis 18 months later, a present for the new tenants.

We had been in Indianapolis for a few years when the AP's National Sports Editor, Wick Temple, came in to oversee that year's Indy 500 coverage. Wick wanted to get the full Indy racing experience and asked me if I could take him to the Hoosier 100, a dirt track event for midget race cars at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, just down the street from our apartment. A.J. Foyt, who was going to drive in the 500 the next day, was also racing that night.

At the last minute, I called Judy and said, "Can I bring Wick home for dinner tonight?"

Judy had two lamb chops and some vegetables ready to make for our dinner, but she said, "Of course." Then she realized I had our only car and she had nothing to feed Wick.

She threw some vegetables into a pot to begin cooking and walked out into our courtyard and looked for someone with a car to get her a chicken from a nearby grocery store.

We knew many of the people who lived in our courtyard, but none of them were home. Judy then heard guitar music coming from one apartment that she wasn't familiar with. She knocked on the door.

Someone called "Come in" and Judy found two young men, one strumming a guitar and both of them obviously stoned. She said, "Could one of you please run to the store and buy me a chicken. My husband is bringing his boss home for dinner and I don't have a car. I'll give you the money and I need it soon."

The guitar player looked up dreamily and said, "I'll buy you a chicken."

Judy gave him the money and ran back to our apartment to continue the meal preparation. Fifteen minutes later, she went back to see if the chicken had arrived and, instead, found the two guys in exactly the same position she had left them.

She walked in uninvited and yelled at the guitar player, "I need that chicken. Go now!"

He looked startled, but jumped up and walked out of the apartment to buy the chicken, which arrived in time for Judy to serve Wick and me a lovely dinner before we headed to the track.

I was transferred to New York Sports at the beginning of 1980 to take over the auto racing beat and AP put us up at the palatial Drake Hotel at 56th and Park Avenue for four weeks while we hunted for a house.

The kids were six and five at the time and, although we obviously were not going to buy anything in Manhattan, Judy decided to learn as much about getting around the city as possible while we were living there.

She took the kids on daily trips around Manhattan, frequenting Central Park, trying out the bus system and, of course, going down "the rabbit holes" to the subway. She had the kids read the signs and soon, all three of them were comfortable with the big city.

Finally, we decided the only place in the area we could afford to live in was New Jersey and, while I was at work, Judy and the kids took a bus to Westfield, which had been recommended to us, to look at some houses.

She called me at work to say, "There are two houses here we can afford. One of them is big and needs a lot of work. The other is small and needs a lot of work."

Not being terribly handy, the smaller place sounded ideal.

I asked, "What kind of yard does it have?" Judy replied, "The good news is that the yard is just big enough so the house doesn't overlap it."

That was the house we lived in for the next 16 years.

Judy, Tory and Lanni traveled with me every summer for 11 years after I took over the racing beat,. We drove from race to race in a small station wagon with a Sears Clam Shell car top carrier holding most of our worldly possessions.

In those days, car safety was a different story. Instead of being belted into the back seat, the kids spent most of the trips lying on blankets in "the way back," reading, sleeping or playing games.

Family Picture around 1981

We rented our house out for eight weeks each summer to help defray the costs, although AP payed for much of the traveling.

We stayed at great resorts, like The Fountainbleau in Miami Beach and the Hershey Resort in the Poconos. But we also stayed in some real dumps. Wherever we laid our heads, Judy made it work. She fed the kids breakfast and lunch in the room most days and we ate our dinner out as a family.

Until the kids got old enough to go to the track with me, helping out in the media center by delivering papers, making copies, serving drinks and running errands, Judy found things for them to do all day, including working on a foreign language of their choice with each kid, often learning each day's lesson the day before teaching it.

Finally, though, Tory had had enough of traveling and decided he wanted to stay home to be with his friends and to get a summer job.

Judy decided to get a job, too, although she didn't know what she wanted to do.

There was an ad from an HMO in the Newark Star-Ledger that read: "Phlebotomist needed. Will train."

Judy, who had taken some classes in medical coding and knew a lot about medicine, answered the ad but had second thoughts about learning to draw blood. She went to the interview anyway.

Before she left, I begged her not to get too personal with the interviewer. "This is business," I said.

When she got home, I asked how it went.

"Well, I wasn't qualified for the job, but we talked for quite a while and I invited the lady to come to our seder if she needs a place to be on Passover. And I told her, if something comes up that I might be good at, give me a call."

Two days later, the phone rang. It was the lady at the HMO calling to say they had decided to create a job for Judy that put her all-around knowledge and personality to work. The position was called Health Information and Judy was great at it, running down answers on just about any question that came up.

After about two years, the working environment had changed greatly and Judy wasn't enjoying the job any more, so she quit.

Her mom was visiting and said, "You have no experience. You'll never find another job."

Two days later, she was hired as a receptionist/clerk at a doctor's practice in Westfield.

Never underestimate my wife.

Judy is wonderfully unpredictable, caring, loving, smart, funny and brave. I just hope we have many more years together.