When Joan Olson thinks about the first time her husband Edward showed interest in her she feels like a kid again.

That's because until they married her name was Joan Kidd. He swept her off her feet, well, skates, at the Ballard Ice Arena on Dock Street back in '48. "My friend Gloria and I took the bus three times a week to skate there," Olson, 77, who was born and raised in West Seattle, vividly recalled.

"We would see him come in and he was so handsome and wore this Scandinavian navy blue sweater with the white snow and elks. We were like, 'He's here. He's here.' One time it was couples only so I began leaving the ice and he came up from behind and took my arm. What a thrill!'

"She was a very beautiful girl, still is," offered Edward, 83, a retired union construction electrician and merchant seaman in the Pacific during World War II. "He started taking Gloria and me home in his beautiful car," Joan said.

"It was a '48 Ford convertible, creme-colored," Edward said. "I went on vacation up to Seshelt, Canada, where my aunt and uncle had a lumber company, for maybe a month," said Joan. This was soon after Edward and Joan had met.

"Gloria wrote me and said Eddie took her to the Lakewood Ice Arena near Tacoma because the Ballard one was closed in the summer," Joan said. "I thought I'd better get back. Oh I came back! I thought, 'I can't spend my time up here when Gloria is making time with my boyfriend.'" Edward responded wisely and said he didn't recall that he and Gloria had any hanky-panky.

The trip back from British Columbia paid off and he and Joan married July 14, 1950, at Holy Rosary, the year she graduated high school there. Their reception was at the modest Holly Hall in High Point she said. Her aunt had flower gardens and so they saved money on the florist. They bought Joan's mother's house, at 4002 36th Avenue SW, including everything in it "from the bed sheets to the lawn mower."

"When I met the priest who married us and he asked for my address he thought I was pulling his leg," said Edward. "Holy Rosary is at 4142 42nd Avenue Southwest, and I lived at 4142 42nd Avenue South, in Rainier Valley."

"I had just graduated high school and was turning 18," said Joan. "A year earlier, Mom thought I was too serious with Ed and took me up to Skagway, Alaska, to work during that summer. She was a hospital cook. Also, we tried selling coffee and doughnuts in town but couldn't make any money at that. She said she could get me a job scrubbing hospital floors. I would play a Gene Autry record over and over called "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" because I missed Ed so much, and I went back home and stayed with my aunt and uncle before the summer ended."

Joan finished school, and Edward put in another year in the Pacific before they reunited. "We sold the convertible to get a television set." said Joan. "No, no," Edward corrected. "We sold the convertible and then we ended up spending the money on a TV. We bought my sister's '37 Plymouth Coupe in 1952, a year after our son John was born because the convertible was too drafty to drive the baby around." "Yes, 1952 was a cold winter," recalled Joan.

So what kind of TV did they buy? "The kind that showed wrestling every Monday night," Edward said. "Seattle stuff, like wrestler Soldat Gorky." They had four sons.

"I was excited when they first opened up Gil's 19-cent hamburgers near where Taco Time is by Fauntleroy, the first time I ever saw fast food," said Edward. "We'd go down there with the boys. Also there was Long's Grocery Store near there. They were so good to our boys, always gave them grapes and candy bars."

Another hangout nearby was the Golf Ball, a drug store and soda fountain close to the golf course. They recently celebrated their 60th anniversary with family from West Seattle and beyond. They have six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. On Thursday's Joan picks up her sister, Caroline Crabtree, 88, from Mount St. Vincent, where Caroline lives, to play pinochle.

Their mother, Vera, had also lived there and was featured in a 1997 edition of the West Seattle Herald for celebrating her 105th birthday there, shortly before she died. She volunteered for the students at Our Lady of Guadalupe School well into her 90's.

Joan and Caroline's father, Leonard W. Kidd worked for the Seattle Star newspaper and owned parking garages downtown. One garage got gobbled up by I-5. He divorced Vera when Joan was three. "Leonard wanted to dance, go to shows, play cards," said Joan. "He had a wandering eye I think."

Caroline graduated from Holy Rosary High School in 1940, and said it was the first graduating class there. She became a clerk in Police Court downtown on the 9th floor.

Many may recall Joan leading day trips for hundreds of area seniors through the group "The Golden Fellowship" at First Lutheran of West Seattle on the 1990's which she said is still going strong.

Joan and Caroline had two brothers, John Kidd, a West Seattle real estate broker, and Edward L. Kidd, who worked for the City and was elected as City Comptroller in 1975. He served one, four-year term. He passed away last year.

During his four-year term, Dixy Lee Ray also served, as the state's first female governor. Joan worked on her campaign.

"Brilliant lady," Joan recalled. "I loved her. But she had a tough look and got a really bad rap from all the newspaper men. She had a farm on Fox Island, between Tacoma and Gig Harbor. She and her sister had a fruit orchard and raised pigs. She named each pig after a newspaper writer she didn't like."