Oftentimes on Valentine’s Day, we focus on new love. Young love. A love that is on fire, fresh with newness and passion. But what about the enduring kinds of love, the types that last 50+ years and involve sacrifice, struggle, and succeeding against all odds? That’s the story of Richard and Celia Acosta, a couple I recently got to know because of their successful franchise group of McDonald’s restaurants across South Texas, but fell in love with because of their enduring love story. Find our interview below, and see if you don’t find yourself falling in love as well:
Haute in Texas: How did you two meet?
Richard Acosta: Well, I guess I was already about 23 years old, and I had kind of been dating, going out with my friends, but I started to get tired of all that. I actually got really serious and prayed really hard, and I said, ‘God, help me to find somebody really really nice.’ And I remember I actually got on my knees and prayed. About 30 days later, my friend and I were supposed to go to a night club, but I told my friend I was done with all that, let’s go to an event the radio was promoting in a dance hall instead. When my friend and I got there we got up to dance and they gave away our table. We complained to the management and they gave us the table back, we get up to dance again, we come back, and my wife andher sister were sitting at our table. They had given away our table again. So I looked at my wife and said, ‘Wait a minute, this was our table.’ And her sister spoke up and said, ‘Well, we’ll have to share the table.’ So then the music started again, and I asked Celia to dance, and that was it.
HIT: The rest was history.
RA: Yeah. I know I danced every record with her.
HIT: And what year would this have been?
Celia Acosta: Towards the end of ’67. Because we got married in ’68 a year later. But my sister and I were supposed to go to a wedding, but we decided well let’s not go to the wedding. Because my parents were very strict, so we had to do everything together. So we decided to go to the dance instead.
RA: So I asked her if I could call her, and that was Saturday. So then Sunday I proceeded to call her about 1 o’clock. And I let the phone ring probably about 12 times, and it just kept ringing. As I’m getting ready to hang up, my wife picked up the phone. So we start talking and she starts explaining to me that the house where I lived, her parents had just sold it. Her and her sister were doing a final clean up before the new buyers, and she was already in her car when she heard the phone inside ringing. But she decided to come inside and pick up the phone. And I was about to hang up, so if I had called maybe 3-4 minutes later, I would’ve missed her. And I wouldn’t have been able to get ahold of her.
HIT: You wouldn’t have even been able to find her.
CA: Yeah, back then there was no way to tell who was calling.
HIT: And no Facebook to just look her up or anything either!
RA: Yep. So then we talked and she gave me her new number, and I asked her out. I mean when I first met her and started dancing with her, I immediately fell in love with her. So two weeks after we met I asked her if she would be my girlfriend. I was lucky she said yes. And then two weeks after that I asked her to marry me. I had my fingers crossed, and she said yes. She comes from a very traditional family, so I had to get my family to come and talk to her parents, and she was the oldest. Her father was like, ‘Who is this guy? We don’t know anything about him.’ So he didn’t give me an official yes. But we both had good paying jobs, and I had joined the Air Force Reserves during the Vietnam War. I worked on airborne electronics avionics. I was maintaining aircraft at Kelly Air Force Base. We didn’t know we were working at the same base. But we planned our wedding, and it turned out really well. It was meant to be. We’ve been married 51 years now, 52 in October.
HIT: How long were you married before you became an owner/operator of your first McDonald’s store?
CA: I think like 7 years.
HIT: Wow. So you were saving, working, and at what point did you decide McDonald’s was what you wanted to get into?
RA: I think you just have to look back and wonder about God’s plan, because I had a good job at Kelly Air Force Base, and my wife talked me into going back to school. So I enrolled at Our Lady of the Lake University and started going to class at night, working full time during the day. One of my professors took a liking to me and gave me a book of franchises. For whatever reason, I would always end up on McDonald’s. The book would always open up to McDonald’s. So we were young, and we thought, ‘Well let’s go for it. Let’s write to them.’ To our surprise, they sent us an application, and in the financial section if we liquidated everything we had, it was about $18,000. And back then, to get into McDonald’s was about $600,000. Big difference.
Again to our surprise, they called us after reviewing our application and said they wanted to meet with us at their headquarters in Dallas. I’d never been in an interview like that, and I was so nervous. At the end they said, ‘Can you guys step outside for a minute?’ And maybe 15-20 minutes later, they called us back in and said, ‘We’re starting this new program, and we want to include you guys in it. We’re going to build a McDonald’s, and we’ll let you lease it with the option to buy it after 3 years.’ It was still $50,000 to participate, so we came back and started looking around for banks to borrow from.
CA: Five banks said no.
RA: Yeah. And then I remember I was going into a coffee shop and I ran into a friend of mine from high school. We sat down and he asked me how everything’s going, so I told him I had the opportunity to get in to a McDonald’s but I didn’t have the funds. And he told me, ‘Well that’s what I do.’ And it just so happened he was working with a program by the Small Business Association to help people start their own business and get funding. So they basically co-signed part of the note, and then they introduced us to a loan officer with Frost Bank, and they agreed to loan us the money. I look back on it thinking what were the odds that all these things would fall into place? I have to believe it was meant by God.
HIT: Even to qualify for the first store was so many hoops you had to jump through! So you guys quit your job at Kelly Air Force Base, and you were all in at this point?
RA: Yeah, we quit our jobs, sold our house, took out our retirement and our savings, I think we even sold an old car we had. We moved in with Celia’s parents and we were all in one bedroom with our two toddlers and a newborn.
HIT: So it was the two of you, three kids, all in one room living with your parents?
CA: Yeah, that’s love, right?
RA: It was. We were going to get the support from our family, and they would help us watch the kids and everything. We would drive to the restaurant together in the morning, she would open it and work in the mornings, I would come back around 11 in the morning or so and then work all day to close the restaurant every night. We were always there.
CA: Our first restaurant on San Pedro had an office in the basement, so we would office together, ride back home together, everything.
RA: Yeah, so we were very undercapitalized. It took us a long time to get running before we could afford to hire a manager, I think like a year. And then it was 10 years before we could open our second restaurant.
HIT: Has there ever been a time that you disagreed strongly about something with the business, or have you always gotten along?
RA: Not really, I mean we would always try to look at everything.
CA: I think we also tried to always treat each other with a lot of respect. It wasn’t, ‘Hey I’m right, you’re wrong.’ It was, what IS the best decision?
RA: You’re always trying to make the right decision because everything impacts your children and their future, and then our employees and their families. Now we have 47 locations and around 1800-1900 employees, and that’s a lot of families to be responsible for. We’ve got a lot of families that have been with us 20, 30 years. If you try to take care of their needs, not just financially, they’ll choose to stay working for you. We’ve seen employees meet at McDonald’s and get married, we’ve seen their children grow up. It wasn’t just about us, you have to figure out what’s going to be the best thing for everybody.
HIT: And now almost all your children have chosen to come back and work in the business as well. Did you have any fears with that, or did you know it would work from the beginning?
RA: No, I mean I think they all went away from school, and then when they came back they evolved from just understanding business ideas, to seeing how it really works in the business. But they all worked in the restaurants when they were growing up, from helping us with the landscaping, to mopping the floors, everything. They knew every facet and how much work it would be.
HIT: What’s been your proudest moment of your marriage?
CA: I would say our 50th or our 25th wedding anniversary. At our 25th my Dad was there.
RA: Yeah, we had a big church celebration for our 25th, and we were all dressed up. So I’m walking out of the church and I looked at my father-in-law, and he’s crying. So I said, what’s the matter Dad? And he said, ‘Well I’m just so happy with how everything turned out.’ And I said, ‘So does this mean I have permission to marry your daughter now?’ And he laughed and he said, ‘Yeah.’
HIT: So what would you say is the secret to a successful marriage?
CA: You know, my husband and I went on a cruise, and they did the whole, who here has been married the longest? So they brought us on stage, and they asked us the same thing. And the first thing that comes to my mind, and the first thing that always comes to my mind, is respect. That we always try to treat each other with respect. And think about what you say, because whatever you say you’re never going to be able to take it back.
RA: And the other thing, I think, is to always put the other person first. Those are the two things, if you always put your spouse first and treat each other with respect, I think those are two things that have helped us all these years. She’s my little valentine.
Thank you to the Acosta Family and McDonald’s for allowing me into your day, and inspiring me to go home and give my husband some extra love and respect. Happy Valentine’s Day!
XO,
A
P.S. This post is sponsored by McDonald’s. Don’t worry though, all opinions are my own!
