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Today marks the 12th wedding anniversary of Bud and Edna Carlson of Cantwell. The couple eloped 48 years ago today in Fort Wayne, Ind., and didn’t realize it was Leap Day until they returned to Edna’s parents home in Millington, Mich., to announce their marriage.

“We never even thought about the date until her folks said, ‘Did you know what day you got married on?’” Bud recalled.

And the Carlsons have kept the Leap Day tradition — celebrating their wedding date every four years — only recognizing the in-between years if their children make a point of it.

Today, the Carlsons plan to travel the Parks Highway to Fairbanks to do some shopping and go out for a special dinner to mark their anniversary.

Bud’s even thinking of buying Edna some flowers to mark the occasion, and he’s looking forward to celebrating their golden wedding anniversary two years hence even though it won’t be a Leap Year Day date.

Bud who was born and raised in Alaska, grew up at a mining camp on Valdez Creek located about 8 miles off the Denali Highway between Paxson and Cantwell, and attended school in Cantwell through the fifth grade.

He was working for the Alaska Railroad on the Hurricane Section in 1959 when he received a letter from Edna. She had found his name and address in a Lonely Hearts column in a magazine.

“I wrote to him out of curiosity,” Edna said.

Less than five months later, Bud was knocking on Edna’s door, on his way to vacation in Mexico.

“He looked like Elvis,” Edna recalled. “He had black, wavy hair and sideburns — oh yeah,” she recalled in a telephone interview Thursday.

“It’s true when they say you see the one you want. I opened the door and I knew this was it,” Edna said.

After meeting Edna, Mexico went out the window, Bud said. In a matter of weeks the couple drove to Fort Wayne for a quick marriage, and were soon heading north to Alaska.

“My vacation was up,” said Bud, who has retired twice, working for the railroad for a total of 40 years.

The Carlsons landed back in Hurricane section and lived in Alaska Railroad housing up and down the line — Hurricane, Curry, Dunbar, Willow and Cantwell — building a house and settling in Cantwell 36 years ago.

Edna took to Alaska immediately.

“I liked it. It was so beautiful. I wasn’t even scared,” she said. “I learned to wash clothes by hand, cook on a coal stove and keep kerosene lamp chimneys clean.”

Today, all four of the Carlsons’ children and their families live within a mile of their parents.

“I have five grandchildren in Cantwell School right now,” boasted Edna.

Contact staff writer Mary Beth Smetzer at 459-7546.