Couple spend 24-year marriage mostly eating out

COLUMBUS >> Neither Bill nor Jennifer Casto likes to cook, so they have dined out nearly every night for 24 years

Listening to Bill and Jennifer Casto discuss their first Christmas together reveals just about everything you need to know about the couple.

First, that they think alike and can even finish each other’s sentences.

Second, well, it’s about their eating habits:

“Do you remember where we ate our first Christmas in Columbus?” Jennifer asks.

Together, they reply: “Waffle House.”

Jennifer: “Because we couldn’t find any other place.”

Bill: “That was before there were a lot of restaurants open on Christmas. Now, there are a lot, but at that time (1995) we searched all over for them.”

Jennifer: “That Christmas, we ate one meal at Waffle House and one meal at the (OhioHealth Riverside Methodist) hospital cafeteria. Those were the two places that were open.”

That Christmas was spent in the same fashion as almost every other day in the 24-year marriage of the Short North couple: eating out. And on the nights they don’t eat out, they bring food home.

By now, it may be obvious that there is one thing they definitely don’t do.

“He doesn’t like to cook, and I don’t like to cook,” Jennifer said.

And so they don’t. Ever. It’s really that simple.

“Why start a bad habit?” Jennifer said. They will have yogurt or microwave oatmeal for breakfast and maybe a grab-and-go lunch of carrot sticks or fruit on some days, but that’s about the extent of their meal preparation. The two met in Delaware at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, where Bill, 77, a former pastor, was a professor and Jennifer, 52, a student. After her graduation, the two kept in touch, and, eventually, romance blossomed. They wed in August 1995 in what was his second marriage — he has three grown children — and her first.

They like to jokingly joust about Jennifer’s rare attempts to cook. One story ends with Jennifer and Bill slipping on grease-splattered floors after a panfried chicken recipe went south.

There also was a time when Jennifer ruined a microwave oven by forgetting to add water to a macaroni-and-cheese cup.

DORAL CHENOWETH III — THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH VIA AP Bill and Jennifer Casto celebrate their anniversary in Columbus, the way they have spent most nights of their 24-year marriage, by dining out at a restaurant. Sarah Curry serves them at Milestone 229, which is where they have celebrated anniversaries in recent years.