5 Marriage
As an adult, Andrew stood six feet tall, ramrod straight, and well proportioned, and he weighed about 180 pounds. He dressed carefully and typically wore a vest with gold chain and watch. When he spoke he had a little whistle.41 His hair was dark and his eyes black and “piercing” or “flashing.” In later years he had a reddish nose (likely from a skin condition called rosacea); this embarrassed him, because he associated a red nose with drinking. He wore his hair short and neatly cut. Most of the time he wore a short moustache.42 A natural leader, he stood out in a crowd.
In 1881, Andrew began courting Olive (Ollie) Woolley, born June 1, 1860, to Edwin Dilworth Woolley and Mary Ann Olpin, the fourth of Edwin’s six wives. Andrew was twenty-two and Ollie twenty. Ed Woolley had served as the long-time bishop of the Thirteenth Ward (from 1853 to his death in 1881), and he was a merchant and an occasional business manager for Brigham Young.43
Ollie, by contrast to Andrew, was short (just over five feet tall) and a little plump, with blue eyes, light complexion, and reddish hair that she combed smoothly behind her ears and fastened in the back in a knot.44 She dressed carefully and weighed 137 pounds at marriage and the same at age thirty-nine. She had a soft personality and was caring and energetic.
Ollie loved music. She sang in a sweet soprano voice and played the piano and organ. Once when her two older brothers offered a prize to their several sisters for the one who could first sing a song to her own accompaniment, she won the $5 prize. When her father criticized playing cards, Ollie put them away. When she understood that the Bible forbade eating pork, she decided she would not eat pork.45
In June 1881, Andrew asked Ollie to marry him and she accepted. But they postponed their wedding on account of her father’s ill health. After Edwin’s death on October 14, the young couple renewed their wedding plans and were wed and sealed in the Endowment House on February 2, 1882. They occupied the house Andrew and his mother had lived in.46
Andrew and Ollie at marriage, 1882.
Note that against the same background, Andrew is much taller.
