"I had a little romantic streak in me," he later told the LDS Church News. "I'd go to the commodore's garden in San Diego, pick off the head of a snapdragon and put that bloom in my letter to her. The bloom would be dried by the time she got it; nonetheless, she'd find a flower from me in the envelope."

When he returned, they resumed their courtship, and on Oct. 7, 1948, they were married in the Salt Lake Temple. Benjamin L. Bowring, who had been president of the Hawaii and Los Angeles temples, performed the sealing. He counseled the young couple on how to avoid long-term misunderstandings.

"Kneel down by the side of your bed every night and one night, Brother Monson, you offer the prayer, aloud on bended knee; and the next night, Sister Monson, you offer the prayer, aloud on bended knee. If you do this, you'll never retire angry one with another. No misunderstanding that terminates at the end of one day will ever get out of line," President Monson said of his advice.

He told the Church News, "I've shared that same formula with all the couples whose sealings I have performed since I became a general authority."

The young couple set up housekeeping at their first apartment, 508 S. 200 West, where he had grown up.

A few months before their marriage, he graduated with honors from the U., where he majored in marketing and minored in economics. At the time, he worked his way up in classified advertising at the Deseret News, becoming manager of the department.

As early newlyweds, he and his wife joined a bridge club. When club members came to their home, some of them smoked and he was concerned about it. He asked his bishop at that time what he should do and was told everything would work itself out.

A short time later, when he was set apart as a counselor in the ward bishopric, he went to see Elder Harold B. Lee, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. "He didn't ask me the usual questions concerning worthiness," President Monson later wrote. "He simply, and in and off-hand manner, said, 'Brother Monson, you don't have to play cards for entertainment, do you?' I said, 'No.' That was the end of the bridge club."

At age 22, he was called as bishop of the Temple View 6th-7th Ward, which had "1,060 members, 85 widows and the largest welfare load in the church." Latter-day Saints who recall President Monson's sermons in general conference over the years remember many stories he has told from his years of service as a young bishop, struggling to help those who had little material wealth.