Evangeline Young, 85, and husband Mathias, 88, Burrillville, were the longest-married couple taking part in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s service yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

PROVIDENCE — The bishop looked out over his invited parishioners — the reserved pews closest to the altar full with gray- and white-haired couples — and told the story of a woman four times widowed.

First, the woman had married a banker, began the Most Reverend Thomas J. Tobin. When the banker died, she married a nightclub singer, followed by a preacher and finally a funeral director.

One day, Bishop Tobin recalled, someone said to the woman: “That’s quite a story. How did you end up marrying a banker, a nightclub singer, a preacher and a funeral director? She said, ‘Well, that’s very easy. I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go.’”

An outburst of laughter filled the cavernous Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul yesterday afternoon as Bishop Tobin asked some 240 invited couples and hundreds of their relatives to reflect on the mystery, amusement and prayerful wonder that had brought them together in matrimony.

The special Mass was the second-annual wedding anniversary celebration offered by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence which gave couples a chance to renew their wedding vows after decades of marriage.

The invited guests included 88-year-old Mathias Young, clad in a gray suit as he sat in the front pew, and his younger bride, Evangeline, 85, dressed in purple jacket and skirt. They grew up a couple of houses apart from each other on Main Street in Mapleville, a village of Burrillville, and married 68 years ago, June 1, 1940, when the world teetered on the brink of a second world war, television was the marvel of the ages, and the mills sustained everyone, it seemed.

Each had sisters who thought the two should meet “so they tricked us and arranged a date,” Mrs. Young said after the ceremony.

The rest is … well, life. Filled with blessings and sadness.

To know a long marriage, Mrs. Young said (the couple still lives in Mapleville), “You have to forgive and forget. You can’t hold it in if you have any disagreements and you have to go on. And of course, our faith to the church has been very important. That is a big help.”

Speaking to the Youngs and the other couples, Bishop Tobin said that anniversaries are, by definition, intersections of the past and future.

Regardless of the history that had brought the couples together, the bishop said, they all have demonstrated the four components necessary to matrimonial success: permanence, faithfulness, creativity and holiness.

The future is always hidden, Bishop Tobin said, but those who commit to each other know they can depend on the other through good and bad.

And “regardless of what happens, God will be with you,” he said. “He is the partner in your marriage. He will walk with you all the days of your life.”

As the bishop led the couples in reciting their vows again, Jeannette Mogayzel, 71, gripped the hand of man she married 53 years ago and beamed a smile that Charles Mogayzel, 77, returned in spades.

He pressed her hand against his lapel that sported the white boutonniere he bought at Stop & Shop for the occasion. It matched the white corsage his wife wore on her camelhair coat.

“I picked them up thinking they would be nice for the occasion,” he said.

When the couple met at a sock hop more than a half-century ago, Jeannette wasn’t all that impressed.

“I didn’t like him.”

But he was persistent and asked her out. Soon love led the way, through the birth of four children, his vocation as a machinist, her career at A.T. Cross pen.

“When you renew your vows a second time it is much different,” Mrs. Mogayzel, of Pawtucket, said. “It is much more meaningful. There is more sincerity. The first time I was 18 and was looking forward to the big party.”

And now?

“Now I’m honored to marry him again.”

tmooney@projo.com