You might think that after 39 years of marriage, you would know everything there is to know about your spouse. Not so for one couple from a rural town in the Prairies.

For the first time, on April 17, "Sandy" saw her husband dressed as the gender he identifies with — a woman.

We are not using their real names or the community they live in to protect their identities.

Sandy, who is helping her husband through the transition from male to female by teaching her to apply makeup and shop for clothes, said she was worried about what her husband would look like.

"It's crossed my mind a few times wondering if she'd be disappointed, but I've been anxious for it, actually — anxious for her to get on this road, which means we can both start travelling now. It's a good thing," Sandy laughed as she held her husband's hand and added gently, "I do have a little too much rouge on you."

Sandy's husband, Jacqueline — the name she now uses — is dressed in a stylish grey wig, black pant suit and sensible heels.

'I love the feeling'

Three years of testosterone blockers and hormones have softened her appearance. Muscle has melted away, there are new curves in new places and, at the age of 67, Jacqueline's skin is glowing.

"I'm really worried about not being passable, but as long as I'm not looking like a real freak I feel very comfortable," Jacqueline said.

"I've lost a lot of body hair. I'm actually growing a set of breasts, and my skin is very, very soft. But you know what? I love the feeling."

For 10 years, Sandy's husband rented a secret storage locker where she kept the clothes she used when she needed to dress as a female.

"I was hiding from my wife," Jacqueline said. "So I needed some place to store this. There was a hotel right next door that I used to use.

"I used to rent rooms in there, get dressed and just, well, fantasize about what I could be," she explained.

"I always knew I was different and I wish I would have known when I was younger all the things that kids know today, someone can explain to them actually what's happening, why they feel the way they do."

'We were really soulmates'

Sandy and Jacqueline met in high school in a small Prairie town in the '60s. As they recall, they didn't really like each other. Then after one marriage apiece for both of them, they met again and things clicked.

"We were really soulmates," Sandy said.

"We read the same books, we liked the same poetry and loved the same music. We had so much in common that it's really unfortunate we didn't like each other in high school."

Jacqueline agreed: "We seemed to look at the world in the same kind of light. We enjoyed each other and I really wanted to marry her," she said.

She quickly added, "What I was doing in those days was basically trying to block out what was bothering me. I've wanted to be a female ever since I can remember — eight years old or whatever.

"I got caught once by my mother," Jacqueline recalled. "She came home and I was dressed up in her clothes and I thought I was going to die, but I think she was so embarrassed she just kind of shuffled it under the rug and never brought it up. I was mortified."

Sandy said that before her husband came out with the news, no one would have suspected she was a transgender woman.

"She was always rough and tough and hard to bluff, big muscles. She could lift a fridge and carry it across the room just macho macho, really and truly."

For years, Sandy and her husband had a successful construction company. But during the recession in the early '80s, that came to an end.

"We lost a lot of money," Jacqueline said. "Like over a million dollars overnight, we woke up one morning and the banks had closed up a whole bunch of our customers. They owed us all kinds of money and they were out of business."

Growing anger

Over the years, Sandy blamed her husband's growing anger on the loss of their company.

"It just seemed like things were never the same again. My husband started taking jobs farther and farther away from home; eventually she was gone for months," Sandy said, adding that she had thought about divorce.

"We had a wonderful relationship by telephone but in person it was totally hell. She'd talk about suicide."

Jacqueline agreed to get counselling, but Sandy didn't know it would be through a transgender support group.

"They kept saying that I have to tell her that it wasn't fair, what I was doing, and that was really gnawing at me," Jacqueline said. "It gnawed at me, the more I would get mad at myself, and it just kind of blurted out."

Sandy recalled the moment: "I believe it was Christmas Day, she decided to tell me. We were sitting in the living room by the Christmas tree and my husband said, 'I want to be a woman.' I was hurt and angry. I thought, 'Why didn't you tell me this 30 years ago? Why didn't you tell me 10 years ago? What do we do now?'"

Jacqueline said she felt like a coward.

"I wanted this life and yet I didn't want to lose her," she said. "I was just completely frightened about what could happen. We had a daughter, and I guess I was just too much of a coward to tell her before,"

Sandy wrote about her fears in a letter.

"After 37 years of marriage, my husband has decided to become a woman. He is at the point where he is supposed to live as a woman before he can have the surgery. He wants me to teach him to apply makeup properly, how to dress and walk. If he were someone other than my husband, I would be fine with this," she wrote.

"He was/is my best friend. This is very emotional and at times disturbing. I know he has to do this or die. What about me you ask? Whose trauma is worse? Whose condition is more urgent? How do we get through this? Do I love him anyway or throw him by the wayside?"

Staying married

Since writing that letter, Sandy and Jacqueline have decided to stay married but live apart.

There are no national figures on how many people identify as transgender in Canada, or how many people transition later in life, like Jacqueline.

How many couples stay together after transition is another unknown, but today, Sandy and Jacqueline are still close.

"I don't know how my wife got past the anger," Jacqueline said, "but that's the kind of person she is. She will look at life from both sides. Her whole philosophy is like, life is wonderful even with the things that happened. I mean, we've had some tough goes, but she's a fighter, she really is."

Said Sandy, "The thing is with all of the hormone treatments, like, she is no longer the angry person. She's who she was way back then — that soft, sweet person, the thoughtful person. I mean, I love her more than I did before, and we are probably closer now than we ever were.

"If I would have thrown her by the wayside, I would have lost a husband and my best friend. We'll see each other through this, and I think eventually we probably will be two little old ladies sitting in a rocking chair, holding hands."