Tim & Vanessa Lorentzen Family!

December 02-128, 2001

Two couples don't kiss before marriage

By VIRGINIA GRANTIER, Bismarck Tribune

In the candlelight in Bismarck's Evangel Temple Friday afternoon, a wife's lips touched her husband's lips.

For the first time.

It was the first kiss ever, ever --for the never-been-kissed-by-anyone just-married couple.

Katie (Rehn) McAfee, 25, and Tim McAfee, 24, who had dated for two years, had managed not only to keep a promise to remain chaste until marriage, but also not to kiss until the marriage altar.

But there's more.

After their kiss, a second just-married couple next to them kissed: Nadir Torres, 22, and Margie Rehn, 21 -- who is Katie's sister. Their first kiss, too.

"It was wonderful (the kiss)," said Margie and Nadir, simultaneously, at the wedding dance later.

"It was so sweet," said Margie, who plans to be a full-time homemaker just like mom. "Just a little peck."

Tim said his kiss with Katie was great. But he laughed, "I don't have anything to compare it with."

All four are Christians who wanted to uphold biblical law on sexual purity and then decided to take it a step further. Margie and Nadir were high school sweethearts at St. Mary's Central High School, when, early on, they decided not to kiss. Nadir said he heard God telling him not to kiss until marriage.

And Katie and Tim, who dated for two years before marrying, decided that Nadir's and Margie's no-kissing plan was a good idea and adopted it. She said they were concerned that kissing could "light a fire."

To not kiss . . .

"It takes a great deal of self control. Doing what you feel is right is not always the easiest thing," said Margie, who was all veil, white dress, golden curls -- and steel, it seemed, to the spiritual core.

During dating, usually, the girls' parents, Pam and Larry Rehn, prayed with the couples before letting them leave for a date. One night, Katie and Tim left, Pam realized too late, without a prayer. Pam told Larry to pray, that she felt the couple needed it that night. When Katie and Tim came home, they retold how they'd had a tough time, but all of a sudden the need lifted.

"I always believed in God before, but after this I knew the power of parents' prayer," Pam said.

Pam said the goal of her daughters and son-in-laws was "to take a stand for other young people out there that you can actually do this -- that it's possible to love each other and do this and stay away from those things."

She said because her daughters and sons-in-laws focused on other things -- getting to know each other and working out problems, the two couples are "years ahead of people who have been married for years."

"They devoted time getting to know their likes and dislikes, worked things out," Pam said.

Pam said she and Larry, a longtime Bismarck High School teacher, "really believe in family," and have been doing such things as living in a Mandan double-wide trailer for the last 25 years so they could afford for Pam to stay home full-time.

"When you develop this relationship with children from birth, you can establish (values)," Pam said.

In the eighth grade, Katie was taken out to dinner, a big event, and happily took the covenant of purity. She vowed to remain pure and was given a purity ring to wear. A couple years later it was Margie's turn.

"Larry and I had a philosophy," Pam said. "It was that we didn't want our girls to end up a statistic."

They didn't want them to end up with a sexually transmitted disease, or an unwanted pregnancy or lose their childhood too fast.

"We wanted them to hold on to their childhood as long as possible," Pam said.

This idea that couples need to find out if they're compatible sexually is a cop-out, she said.

She and Larry were virgins. When you have a friendship and trust, "How can you not be compatible?"

When the couples started dating, it was in groups, with Larry and Pam. Pam remembers her Italian mother telling her of the old days -- when couples were never alone. And the Rehns adopted similar restrictions.

"Why would parents want to send them out to be tempted and tested," Pam said. "Give boys and girls enough time alone and it will be disastrous."

Pam said that loosened after they got to know Tim and Nadir and knew "their hearts were in the same place, knew they were committed to the same attitude of purity." But still not allowed was none of that 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. stuff. It was dinner and movie -- then home, pronto.

But this Friday night, it was a wedding dance past midnight. And then home -- to mom's first to pick up the girls' favorite bed pillows. The newlyweds seemed nervous, Pam said. They talked for about an hour, and then, finally, gently, Pam told them it was time to go home -- two blocks away, to two mobile homes that had fortuitously come on the market at just the right time and right place. She told her new sons to be gentle with her daughters. She then watched them walk outside.

"The girls kept looking back," Pam said.

"I finally had to stop looking."