STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — When Patrick Benson popped the question to Barbara Olsen two weeks before Valentine’s Day in 1976, she didn’t want to accept his marriage proposal in the typical ordinary way.
So she turned to the Staten Island Advance.
That year, the paper had kicked off a playful new Valentine’s Day tradition — Love Lines — a popular addition which continued for decades. Love Lines were special, short advertisements aimed at those in love, those falling in and out of it and those looking for commitment.
There, Olsen gave Benson the good news. It would be a marriage made in newsprint.
“Pat, I’d be happy to marry you,’’ Barbara Benson, 72, recalls the ad saying. And their “happily ever after” continues today. The couple will celebrate 50 years of marriage in October — three children and a lifetime of memories later.
“They all thought I was crazy that I didn’t answer him right away,’’ said Barbara Benson, who grew up in Richmond, but now lives with her husband in New Jersey. With a laugh, she admits that some of the details are now a bit fuzzy in both of their memories.
A marriage made in newsprint
She surmises that she’d known about the upcoming Love Lines opportunity and planned her joyful response.
”I thought it was unique that the Advance was doing that and it was kind of fun‚’’ she said.
After The Love Lines were published, Barbara’s response was mentioned in an Advance roundup story about the launch of the new concept and the entertaining posts it had generated.
“Barbara finally took Patrick off the hook by consenting to nuptials,’’ the story read, under the headline “Hey, lover — you’re good news.”
The two were married in Our Savior Lutheran Church, West Brighton. A reception in LiGreci’s Staaten followed in the same community.
Barbara and Patrick Benson are shown in a photo snapped for the Advance on Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. She answered his marriage proposal through a Love Lines ad in the Staten Island Advance in 1976. (Courtesy of Barbara Benson)(Courtesy of Barbara Benson)
And though the couple’s marriage started with that engagement acceptance, their love had blossomed eight months earlier, when the two were introduced by a mutual friend.
Patrick Benson, now 74, a St. George resident at the time, tagged along to an after-work event at a wine-themed New Dorp restaurant with his friend, who worked at Macy’s along with Olsen. On that June night, he met his future wife.
“I arrived late‚’’ she recalled. ”I had the end seat and Pat sat next to me. He ordered the wine and he liked the way I said Jarlsberg,’ with a ‘y’ sound instead of a ‘j.’ He picked the wine and I picked the cheese, and we began dating.“
Her husband popped the question in a restaurant in the Empire State Building in Manhattan in early February 1976. He waited two weeks for his answer to appear in print.
“I got such a reaction from friends and neighbors,” she says with a chuckle: “Are you crazy to do it in the paper?,’’ they asked.
“Everybody nowadays does all these crazy things with proposals,’’ she said. ”I was ahead of the game. I did it differently before anyone else did.”