Margaret and Pat Roach have been together for 64 years. Their secret? A sense of humor.
“You have to laugh at stuff, and he’s hilarious. He makes me laugh. Otherwise, I would’ve probably strangled him by now,” Margaret says.
Married in 1960, Margaret and Pat have known each other since they were little kids growing up in Corpus Christi. Margaret was born in 1938 and Pat was born in 1935.
Pat served in the Korean War from 1956-1957, enrolling at UT shortly after in 1958 and graduating in 1960. Margaret entered UT in 1956, graduating in 1959. During their overlap at UT-Austin, they developed a strong friendship before tying the knot.
Margaret recalls going to Gregory Gym and registering for classes in person when tuition was $50 per semester. They reminisced about old orgs and traditions – like the Orange Jackets and Roundup – with Pat recalling Darrell Royal’s time as a head football coach as “changing the whole vibe.” The Roaches noted the lack of diversity on campus in the ’50s, saying they never saw a Black student.
Once they graduated, they headed to Dallas, where Pat worked for IBM and Margaret became a teacher. But they couldn’t stay away from Austin for too long.
“It’s hard to get away from Austin. We didn’t really want to live any place else,” Margaret said.
After one year, Pat decided to return to UT to get his masters in history. The Roaches resided in graduate student housing by Lake Austin Boulevard. Most of the students there were young newlyweds, and the barracks were “pretty beat up, but way cheap – like really cheap,” says Pat.
Margaret and Pat had two kids at the time, taking them to Deep Eddy Pool almost every day. They would frequent the Split Rail, where they saw future Threadgills owner Kenneth Threadgill yodel, and “kick back, have a beer, and listen to the music.” They said they saw everyone from hippies to cowboys talking with each other.
“They have very little in common, but it was just all a happy group. Everybody thought everybody else was cool, even though they were different. Maybe I’ve romanticized it though,” said Margaret, glancing at Pat, who nodded in agreement.
“He makes me laugh. Otherwise, I would’ve probably strangled him by now.” – Margaret Roach
After Pat finished graduate school, he landed a job at IBM in Houston. But Austin called out to them again. In 1968, they returned and bought a house in Cherry Creek by Crockett High School. All of their children walked to Cunningham Elementary and played baseball with the other kids in the neighborhood.
In 1974, they left their little house and bought a bigger one for their growing family.
For a little taste of nature, the family of five would go to City Park, now known as Emma Long Metropolitan Park. They also frequented Zilker Park (“back when you could find parking”) and participated in the annual Kite Festival contest.
“It was great fun for the kids and for us. Some of the people were very creative with their kites, but ours weren’t as airworthy,” said Pat, Margaret chuckling in response.
Whenever Pat and Margaret wanted “a little adult conversation for a change,” they would go to Donn’s Depot, sometimes stopping by J.T. Youngblood’s for the “best fried chicken in town,” according to Pat.
In 1984, the Roaches bought a house west of Menchaca Road, where they currently reside. Their home is filled with photos of their children, antique cupboards, and natural sunlight. When they first moved in, the area was heavily populated by retired military men and their “Air Force families.”
The Roach family has always been big readers of the Austin American-Statesman. Now they read it online, but they used to get not one but two news home-deliveries since their son was an avid reader. Their second son was a newspaper delivery boy and would distribute the paper north of Menchaca. On the day Elvis died, he ran out of papers in 20 minutes flat.
Margaret and Pat Roach have not only lived through monumental events, but they’ve also been within walking distance of them. During their time in Dallas, Margaret was buying a tricycle for her son on the street when JFK was shot. She remembers hearing the sirens wailing and seeing the president’s car rushing by, only to hear the news of his assassination hours later. “Just total chaos,” she recalled.
Pat was a UT graduate student during the Whitman shootings. He went to campus the night of the shootings, after Whitman’s death, to do research. Pat described the campus as eerily quiet. The uneasiness across campus made it hard for him to do this work.
“Everybody knew somebody who was wounded or killed, so there’s a lot of grief spread fairly thin,” Pat said.
While the Roaches were mostly occupied raising their three kids, Pat, a veteran, marched against the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Pat described the protest as peaceful and said he hadn’t witnessed any altercations. Though, he was shocked to find himself alongside Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a controversial atheist at the time. “Back then, people were shocked that anybody would proclaim to be an atheist,” said Margaret.
Today, Margaret keeps herself active by going to the gym and working in the yard. Pat is semiretired, working as a seasonal Certified Public Accountant.
When asked about what they are the most grateful for, they both said their three wonderful kids and each other.
This article appears in August 2 • 2024.