Aug 24, 2016 By Suzanne Elliott 3 min read

It was a defining moment at the roller rink for Genevieve Jarvis and Millie Staub eight decades ago.

Millie’s younger brother was skating, lost control and couldn’t stop. He ran into his sister and accidentally pulled her down her skirt.

Witnessing the spectacle, Genevieve couldn’t help but laugh.

Rather than being offended, Millie laughed, too, and that moment cemented the friendship between the two girls, who knew each other from attending St. Martin’s West End Catholic School in Pittsburgh.

Millie and Genevieve, whom Millie calls Gen, have been best friends ever since, sharing the highs and lows of their lives since the 1930s.

Their secret? Just like it began: laughter.

“We are laughing all the time,” said Millie, 91. “We’re just two Irish girls.”

“We’ve never argued,” said Gen, 92. “Of course, it helped that we both liked different kinds of men.”

These days, the friends are living and laughing at Friendship Village of South Hills, an Upper St. Clair retirement community. While they live in different sections, they get together several times a week for a game of bridge. And they always eat dinner together on Saturdays, sharing many memories.

“Millie used to date my brother in high school,” said Gen, who moved to Friendship Village 12 years ago.

“He was cute,” added Millie, grinning. She has been at Friendship Village for seven years, a transition that was made easier, she said, by knowing her best friend was nearby.

Gen and Millie have similar likes and interests. They both loved to dance and are fond of the Big Band-era music of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

The also have similar dislikes: “Neither one of us smoked or drank,” Gen said.

Millie left the area while in her 20s to take a job with Bank of America in California. The width of a country could not keep the two friends apart, and Gen traveled across the contient for a long visit. After a few months, Millie returned to Western Pennsylvania to be closer to her family.

As the years passed, the two got married – Gen was in Millie’s bridal party – and began raising their families. Millie had four children and Gen, two. Gen and her husband moved to North Carolina for business, but the two stayed in touch.

“I worked in an insurance office,” Gen said.

“She would call me with funny stories,” Millie said. “Go, tell her about the elephant.”

And so Gen did:

“There was a woman who called the office and said her car was damaged by an elephant,” she said, explaining the woman and her family had parked near a tent where the pachyderms were kept at a circus. An elephant mistook the vehicle, which was small and red, for the bench it sat on during its act.

Gen and her husband returned to the area, moving to Whitehall, in 1991. She immediately got together with Millie, who was living in nearby Upper St. Clair.

“We have laughed and cried together,” said Millie, who has kept many of the letters Gen has written to her over the years.

“I’m grateful,” Gen said.

“Me too,” added Millie.