Hayden Lake couple sets out for Guinness record slalom ski attempt

Richard and Julienne Dance took five attempts on June 16 at 8:45 a.m. in O’Rourke Bay on Hayden Lake as they chased a Guinness World Records title for the oldest married couple slalom skiing together simultaneously with deep-water starts. The Hayden Lake couple’s combined age was 147, and the run drew water-sport enthusiast Cody Garn and photographer Robert Jolley to the bay.

Their son, Jonathan Dance, suggested the record attempt, turning a family idea into an early-morning effort on one of Kootenai County’s best-known recreation lakes. Julienne Dance went forward even after bruising from a dog incident the night before, and Richard Dance said the starts were complicated by the couple’s age and weight differences, especially when the tow boat pulled one skier up before the other.

The timing mattered as much as the skiing. The Dances were preparing to leave for a one-year church mission to Detroit on Belle Isle, which made the June 16 attempt a last chance to try for the record before departing. Church Newsroom has said 2026 mission leaders were scheduled to begin three-year service on or about July 1, 2026, underscoring how close the family was to a new assignment when they went out on Hayden Lake.

The attempt fit a place where lake life often doubles as family tradition. Hayden Lake and the broader Coeur d’Alene area have long been tied to boating and water sports, and local historical coverage says water skiing in the Pacific Northwest began in Coeur d’Alene. The American Water Ski Association says Ralph Samuelson invented water skiing in 1922, a history that gives a modern record chase on Hayden Lake a deeper local echo.

Guinness already lists Lyle Gittens and Eleanor Gittens as the oldest married couple ever by combined age, at 216 years and 132 days. Guinness has also recognized age-related water-skiing marks for Dwan Jacobsen Young, the world’s oldest female waterskier at 92, and Bob Hutcheson, the oldest male waterskier at 94. For the Dances, the appeal was less about records as abstractions than a shared run on a home lake, with family around them and a summer morning in Hayden carrying the weight of something larger than a routine ski set.