Side by side for more than 70 years

SEELEY LAKE – One night in November 1950, Ray Cebulski returned home to surprise his wife Barb and their newborn daughter. Instead he was surprised to find his newborn daughter alone in her crib. Rushing outside to find his wife Barb, he heard her hollering from the coal shed.

Barb had gone out an hour before to get coal for the night and the wind had closed the heavy door behind her. With no handle on the inside to open it and no windows, Barb was trapped.

"I couldn't get out," Barb said. "The baby was in the house. I thought I was in for it."

"She could have been in there a day because a lot of times I would be gone for a day before I could get back," Ray said. "That was a scary thing. The first thing I did the next morning was put a handle on the inside of that door and all the rest of the coal sheds on [the Miller Ranch]."

While this is just one of many stories in their nearly 73 years of marriage, despite the challenges the Cebulskis have enjoyed doing life together. Together they worked, played, raised five children, rode horses and traveled.

"If you pick the right one to start with, you just get along with each other," Ray said.

* * * * *

Ray met Barbara Ann Messerly at a Saturday night dance in Malta, Montana. Ray approached two girls sitting on the bench to see if they wanted to dance. After the first one turned him down, Barb was happy to join him.

Ray had just started working for Miller Brothers Ranch around Chinook, Montana. Barb, the oldest of 10 children, still lived on the family ranch near Zortman, Montana.

On weekends Ray drove 50 miles to take Barb out dancing or to a show. After a three-month courtship, they decided they might as well get married. Ray said it was getting hard to communicate and they figured it was going to be a tough winter.

They got married Sept. 17, 1949 in a small white church in Malta. Barb was 18 and Ray was 23.

The newlyweds lived on the Snake Butte lease just south of Harlem. That fall, they trailed the cattle up to the Bear Paws. It started snowing in November and never quit. In January the warmest day they had was -32 degrees Fahrenheit.

"It was really cold," Ray said. "We got snowed in and the only way we could get out was saddle horse."

Calli was born in the spring of 1950. They spent nine years with the Miller Brothers in the Bear Paws and on the reservation with the cattle.

The first summer Barb cooked for the 13 ranch hands. There was no electricity and they hauled all their water. She cooked on a wood stove and with propane. Ray butchered a cow every week for the camp. After that she would help in the kitchen if needed but she focused on raising their children.

Within the first six years of their marriage they added four more children: Curtis, Wade, Stuart and Berth Ann.

"She had a good education taking care of [her siblings] so when we had our kids she had no trouble taking care of them," Ray said.

"I had enough work with those kids," Barb said. "I don't think we were ever not working."

Barb remembered one spring Ray came home soaked to the bone without his boots.

Ray explained it was raining hard and since he was already wet, he decided to ride his horse across the creek. However, the creek was over eight feet deep from the floodwaters.

Ray said the horse found an old bridge that was under water as they started across but soon went over backwards. Ray's hip boots quickly filled up and "I sunk like a rock in those flood waters."

He was able to get out of them. Once he got to the surface he had less than 15 feet to swim.

"I didn't think I was going to make it, I was so soaked up with water," Ray said. "The hired man asked me why I didn't get the horse's tail cuz that is what you are suppose to do. I said hell, the horse was upside down and going the other way – I was lucky to do what I did. That was a close call. I could have drowned."

When he got home he told Barb, "'I've been down on the bottom of the creek,'" Barb said. "I couldn't hardly believe him."

Sure enough, when the water went down, there were his boots on the bottom of the creek.

One Saturday night, Ray remembered Barb was all "duded up to go dancing." Their driveway was so icy that he thought he would go get some sawdust from the mill and scatter it around so she didn't fall and get hurt. Ray asked her to drive the pickup around and he would scatter it around.

"She kind of slowed down, rolled her window down and stuck her head out to ask, "Where do you want me to go next" just as I threw the scoop shovel full of sawdust in the window," Ray said laughing. "I couldn't help but laugh and she would have killed me if she would have gotten a hold of me. She gave me hell for a while and then she had to laugh too."

Another Saturday night, their truck was stuck in the ice. Barb tried to ease it out but it would not budge. Ray came over and told her to "give it a good yank."

"She gave it a good yank alright," Ray said. " The bumper and everything on the back of the pickup came off."

Barb laughed and said, "It looked like a red rooster without its tail feathers."

The Cebulskis started leasing a place from Irvin Miller on Milk River with hopes of one day purchasing the ranch. For every ton of hay Ray put up, they brought one late or small calf to raise through the winter.

The first year he put up 1,100 ton of hay. The last year, they were rearing 1,500 head. Ray said this brought the average weight up on the Miller Ranch's whole herd a few pounds making a lot of difference on 4,000-5,000 head of calves.

"We were gradually getting built up to where we were doing really good," Ray said. "Then they up and sold the thing. It put us plumb out of what we were really good at doing."

In 1961, after working on a wheat ranch for three years, a friend encouraged Ray to hang up his cowboy boots and move south to load lumber on the railroad at Clearwater Junction for Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Inc. in Seeley Lake. After a week learning how to load lumber and realizing he could make $60 a day, he called Barb.

"Start packing, we are going to move," Ray said. "I'd never made that kind of money."

The Cebulskis loaded their five children, two horses and a dog and found a place on Donovan Creek outside of Clinton, Montana. Ray traveled back and forth to Seeley Lake for 12 years. His oldest three children graduated from high school in Missoula and he served on the Clinton School Board.

With the decline in the railroad for lumber transport, the Cebulskis purchased a place on Boy Scout Road in Seeley Lake in 1972. Ray started Cebulski Trucking. For the next 22 years he hauled log homes and lumber across the United States. Their two youngest children graduated from Seeley-Swan High School, the youngest one graduating in 1975.

In 1974, Ray started representing District 5 on the Missoula Electric Cooperative (MEC) Board of Trustees on which he still serves today.

They traveled a lot with MEC and to visit their children in Alaska and Washington. They also went to Germany, Switzerland and England in the early 1970s to visit their daughter where her husband was serving in Germany. That was the only time they went overseas.

"We decided we needed a vacation," Ray said.

In 1978, the Cebulskis took a pack trip with their friends Tom and Sandy Dellwo into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Ray said they didn't have much equipment "so we borrowed from everyone we knew, packed it up so we thought. We got all our junk on a couple old horses, got aways up there and all the stuff fell off so we had to redo it," Ray said laughing at the memory. "I looked back and I could still see my pickup."

It took them 12 hours to get to Youngs Creek where they camped.

"Oh man it was a miserable trip," Ray said.

When they got out, Tom asked him what he thought.

"I'm going to keep doing it but I'm going to start buying equipment right now," was Ray's response. "We finally got a good outfit put together."

Barb rode a lot when she was young and they both enjoyed being outside. They taught all their children how to ride and enjoyed taking pack trips together.

One memorable trip into the South Fork, Ray told Barb it was going to be a real easy trip, ride 10 miles a day and camp. They left from Holland Lake trailhead at 7 a.m. and they got up on top of the Divide. Instead of stopping to camp, they headed down Holbrook Creek.

"Once you start down into the South Fork you get on a big ridge and it is just solid lodgepole on both sides and there are no open places," Ray said. "We rode and rode and rode. You could see the creek down there but you couldn't get to it. About 6:30 at night you could see the South Fork but I wasn't looking back because she was burning holes in the back of my head."

At 7:30 p.m. they rode into camp. Barb started unpacking to get dinner going. Ray remembers her mumbling, "When I get home I'm putting all this packing gear in a pile and burning it."

"And file for divorce," Barb added. "We rode 30 miles and we still had to eat."

After Barb cooled down, Ray said they enjoyed an eight-day trip riding around the area.

Ray took his last trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness at age 93.

"There is no phone, no people bothering you," Ray said.

The Cebulskies have 10 grandchildren and many more great grandchildren. They have always had horses, mules and dogs.

Ray said they always got along well and thought alike in whatever they did. They never had an argument before they got married.

"We've had our arguments but nothing real serious," Ray said. "I'd just give up."

Barb said if one was really mad about something, the other just wouldn't say anything.

"If you don't fight, there are no problems," Barb said. "If you are fighting before you're married then forget it."

A motto they have lived by for nearly 73 years is "Work, save and don't."

Barb explained, "You work hard, save your money and don't do anything to get in trouble or buy anything you don't need."