Women's card club marks golden anniversary

I just read this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, and I have to say these ladies know how to start a ladies card club! I wonder if they played any poker, or if it was just canasta or bridge. Reminds me that I need to learn how to play Bunco.

Whether it's a friendship, a business partnership or a marriage, few relationships last 50 years. Which is why Rachel Zaelit's card club is so extraordinary. For five decades, this group of eight women has gathered once a month to play cards, enjoy good food and savor lasting friendships.

The group recently celebrated its golden anniversary at Zaelit's Salt Lake City home, the same place the club played its first hand of canasta in November 1955. Since then, the women have added games and welcomed new members and lost others, including one of the original players to death. (The group reached a high of 24.)

Too many years have passed for the women to remember whose idea it was to start the club or why they picked the second Wednesday of the month as their official meeting day. But all agreed that as stay-at-home wives and mothers, they needed a regularly scheduled "girl's night out" to maintain their sanity. From the beginning, their husbands and children understood that few things could keep them from attending. No one is officially in charge, but all admit that Zaelit keeps the group organized.

The death of a close friend in November prevented the club from celebrating its 50th anniversary on the exact date. And they couldn't get together in December, because that is the one month they allow husbands to attend. So the women - who range in age from 62 to 73 - waited until January to mark the milestone. It may have been belated, but was no less sweet.

It seems that Zaelit and company are ahead of their time when it comes to card playing. Today, a growing number of women are shuffling and dealing for fun and competition, according to the trade magazine Woman Poker Player. Women, for example, make up 35 percent of the nearly 75 million people who play poker in the U.S., according to the publication. And over the next two years, experts predict an increase, with the number of women equalling or possibly surpassing men.

Those numbers do not account for all the women who get together regularly to play bridge, canasta or Bunko - an especially popular game among Utah women. Even the beauties on the popular television soap "Desperate Housewives" have a regular card date to catch up on the gossip of Wisteria Lane.

Initially, they made elaborate dinners for each other and lingered into the wee hours of the morning. One time, after playing cards, they decided to go bowling and stayed up until daybreak. They have taken trips to a mountain cabin together and rented a limousine for a Wendover weekend. But these days, they go out to a favorite restaurant to eat and then take turns at one another's homes for snacks and chitchat and however many hands of cards they can squeeze in before 10 p.m. Because after all these years, these women know card club isn't really about the cards.