The Islands’ Sounder interviewed two couples who embody the spirit of Valentine’s Day: love, warmth, unconditional support, and laughter.

Bob and Marsha Waunch

by Colleen Smith Armstrong

It’s a love story that started 40,000 feet in the air.

Bob and Marsha Waunch met in 1972 when they both worked for American Airlines in San Diego. He was a pilot and she was a flight attendant. They flew together a few times and were “just friends, passing in the night” until nearly a decade later.

Bob and Marsha ran into each other in Chicago, headed to flights in different directions. By that time, they were both single, so Bob asked her out to dinner.

“I have extremely high standards,” Bob said. “After 30 minutes on a date with Marsha, it’s like those standards didn’t exist. She blew them right out of the water. I knew I was going to marry her.”

Marsha says she wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, but she quickly realized Bob was “a very special guy.”

A year later, Bob and Marsha were ready to marry, but as they had both walked down the aisle before, they didn’t want to do something traditional. So they flew their parents to Maui for a “vacation” and surprised them with a seaside ceremony in Kapalua Bay.

The Waunches hired a photographer from National Geographic to capture the special moment when their impending nuptials were revealed.

“Bob’s mom’s mouth was wide open – you could have put a grapefruit in it!” Marsha said.

The couple left San Diego in 1985 and moved to Orcas Island. They commuted from Orcas to Chicago, where they flew internationally. Bob retired in 1993 and Marsha left the airline business in 2001.

The Waunches have been involved in countless Orcas community organizations, many of which they helped establish. They have lent their time to the Orcas Medical Center, San Juan Preservation Trust, Chamber Music Festival, and the Orcas Island Community Foundation. Bob and Marsha were instrumental in starting the Orcas Animal Protection Society, and Marsha still runs the shelter.

Bob started the AirHawks, a San Juan Islands youth aviation scholarship program and was one of the first mercy pilots on Orcas, flying more than a dozen moms-to-be to the mainland.

“Marsha is the person I most admire in the world,” Bob said. “I’ve never met anyone – man or woman – in my entire life who is so capable.”

Marsha says she loves Bob’s sense of humor.

“Nobody laughs like he does,” she said.

Bob’s sunny outlook was tested last year when he was diagnosed with colon cancer that metastasized to his liver. In May he underwent surgery to remove the right lobe of his liver. At a recent check up, he was given a clean bill of health.

“One reason he has done so well is his positive attitude,” Marsha said.

Sean and Steffanee Roach

by Meredith M. Griffith

Sean Roach’s first day in eighth grade at a brand new school was a blur of brand new faces, but his wife Steffanee still remembers the day they met: her then-boyfriend Sean Ryan introduced them. Sean Roach was 13, and his family had just moved to Orcas from Mercer Island. His dad was retiring as an airline pilot and his mom sold insurance.

Steffanee’s family had moved to Orcas when she was in elementary school, buying the leatherwork shop that is now Wood’s Cove, but they left the island during her senior year of high school.

“I was so mad,” she said. “They moved me to a 4A school – there were like 600 kids in my class. It was for financial reasons, which I understand better now.” But at eighteen, she remembers biding her time until graduation day. “The day after graduation, I packed up and moved back here,” she laughed. “I worked three jobs.”

It was a good thing, too: Sean and Steffanee kindled a romance in the summer of 1999, when Sean was 21. Steffanee laughs and admits: she’s older by exactly one year, one month, and one day. The two were married in 2000 in the tiny white chapel of the Seventh Day Adventist church and spent their honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta. Sean began his real estate career in Seattle before they moved back to Orcas in 2003 to raise their family.

Steffanee admires Sean’s “drive, his ability to figure out a way to get things done.”

“We just fit together really well: our strengths, our weaknesses,” she said. “We’re similar in lots of ways; we’re both spontaneous, goal-oriented, driven.”

They’re also united by a love of Indian food, mini-series like The Tudors and Rome, and the music of Josh Garrels and Cat Stevens.

The Roaches have four kids: Jeshurun, 12; Sunshine, eight; Judah, five; and Summer, three. (Sunshine keeps her own cooking blog at http://www.thesweetestchef.com/). Sean and Steffanee keep the home fires kindled with date nights and time away together: dinners out, trips to Seattle – and daily weekday workouts. They consider Chuck Silva’s kettle bell class their Friday night “date night,” splitting a burger at the Lower Tavern afterward as a reward.

“Having our relationship as the foundation to build the kids’ lives on is important,” Sean said.

He said he appreciates the support he and Steffanee have provided each other through difficult times, especially as Sean’s parents died in a car accident on Orcas in 1998, after he had graduated from high school.

“We’re a team; it’s always us against the problem,” said Steffanee. The couple has weathered the loss of four grandparents, and during the recent years’ recession and real estate stall they hit financial hard times and were forced to start over from scratch. “It’s almost relieving to have weathered that level of despair and know that it doesn’t do anything to us,” said Sean. “Regardless of what happens to us, we’re joined together; the “D” word is not a part of our vocabulary when anything hard comes up against us.”