Love in the 90s

Photos taken by Keri Pickett.

 
These photos are in the mean time available in a book called “Love in the 90s: B.B. and Jo – The Story of a Lifelong Love”. A tribute to a real-life romance and love story that spans across 70 years, about the author’s grandparents Bernard Blakey and Josie Walker.
 
Book overview:
In 1928 Josie Lou Lydia Walker was thirty-two years old. Everyone assumed she would be a spinster. She had grown up poor in Oklahoma, worked her way through college, and been ordained as a minister, traveling from Oklahoma to Kentucky to Missouri setting up religious education programs. World War I veteran B. B. Blakey, co-owner of a Tulsa, Oklahoma, hardware store, was thirty-three and had broken off an engagement with a local beauty. Having second thoughts, he went to Enid, Oklahoma, to see her at the home of friends – and one Josie Walker opened the door. B.B. and Josie would write over seven hundred letters to each other over the next year and a half as they fell deeply in love. As Josie traveled through a more innocent America, B.B.’s letters marked “Personal” and “Special Delivery” found her in small towns and train stops. Now this wonderful exchange of writing, so filled with the joy of discovering each other, is collected here by B.B. and Jo’s granddaughter, award-winning photographer Keri Pickett. Along with their commentary on love, marriage, and family, she shows us a relationship most people only dream about – and to which all of us aspire.
 
The story of Bernard Blakey and Josie Walker begins in 1928, when Jo, trying to deflect the attention of a suitor, asks B.B. to write to her pretending to be her beau. This innocent request began an exchange of 700 courtship letters that formed their relationship and led to their marriage in 1929. 60 photos.