Robert and Felice Willaford have a unique distinction in their relationship that not many other Plant City couples can claim: They were married on a train as it carried their guests and other passengers across central Florida. This month is the couple’s 14th anniversary.
It only made sense the Willafords were married on a train. Robert had had a career with CSX and his love of trains ended him up with a collection of train memorabilia worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It included a 1963 International Car Company wide-vision caboose, which he donated to the train depot in Historic Downtown Plant City.
The two didn’t meet around trains, however.
Near the end of the 1990s, Felice was working as an office manager at Ace Air Conditioning. The company was called to do a wiring job for a mobile home park that Robert owned. A salesman found out that Robert’s wife had recently died from cancer, and he suggested Felice talk to him and offer some support. Her husband had died from cancer in 1997, so she knew what Robert was going through.
“Next thing I know, we decided to meet once. Just to meet,” Felice said.
She paid for herself on their first outing to Cracker Barrel.
“She went home and told all her family I wasn’t her type,” Robert said.
But, the meetings continued and turned into real dates. After they had been seeing each other for about a year, they began to talk about getting married.
Robert sought advice from his good friend Marshall Johnson, who was connected in the railroad business and personally knew the president of Amtrak.
“I told (Johnson) I didn’t know where to get married,” Robert said. “He said, ‘How about Amtrak?’”
But, unlike couples who marry at or near train stations and hop aboard after the ceremony, the Willaford wedding was to be held on a moving #92 Silver Star while the train was en route to Orlando.
The morning of Dec. 9, 2000, the train’s dining car was fully decorated for the occasion in Miami. The train, carrying everyday passengers mostly unaware that they were riding a mobile wedding venue, went to Winter Haven to pick up the bride, groom, their 64 guests and the officiant. Joseph Bowles, who conducted the ceremony, is a pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, where Robert has been a member for decades.
“By the time we got to the wedding ceremony, it was the A832 mile post,” Robert said. The official location stated on the Willafords’ marriage license is as specific as possible: “CSX Railroad (Amtrak) Mile Post #A832.”
The mile post is between Auburndale and Haines City. In Orlando, the guests transferred and returned home. Robert and Felice, however, stayed on board until they reached Petersburg, Virginia, for their honeymoon, where they visited some of Robert’s relatives. The train kept chugging north to New York.
“One thing that I really was surprised at, is when we got off at Petersburg, Virginia, and the train went by us, all across the diner in white paint was ‘Just Married.’ I don’t know what the people in New York thought about that,” Robert said.
Robert’s railroad career spanned 44 years on Florida tracks. But, before meeting him, Felice hadn’t had much knowledge of trains at all.
“She’s getting pretty good though, now … especially when people come in to the museum, she’s real good at taking the people around,” Robert said.
She has also become quite familiar with the railroads from firsthand experience.
“The only way we travel is by train,” Felice said. “If we go on vacation, we go by train.”
Robert said it was not completely uncommon for couples to have wedding ceremonies at Amtrak train stations or use other railroad-themed elements.
“But nobody actually had the wedding ceremony on the train, so that was really a first,” he said. “And I don’t know of any others it has happened to since then.”
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.