As a child, Alexis Parker figured she would get married around age 22 or 23. But when her friends started marrying around age 21 and she remained solo, Parker told her parents about her suspicions: She actually won't find the right one until she's 28 or 29.

Parker, 29, of the Brighton Heights neighborhood on the North Side, did indeed fit her adjusted time frame. She will marry her fiance, David Sykut, 30, on Feb. 21, and the timing was perfect, she says. Had she married a previous boyfriend, she would have divorced because of personal change.

"I'm really glad it happened later," Parker says. She went through many cross-country moves while single. "The amount of development that I went through and the personal growth I went through between 20 and 29 ... I couldn't imagine going through that in a healthy and safe fashion while married.

"I've definitely come full circle and am in a self-sustaining place," Parker says.

Is there an ideal age range to get married for the first, and hopefully only, time• Some research and statistics may hint at that, but it mostly depends on the individual, say experts and couples interviewed.

Back in the '50s, the median age for a woman's first marriage was about 20, with men's median age being around 22-23, says Paul Amato, Ph. D. He is a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University who did research on the marriage topic, and co-wrote the book "Alone Together: How Marriage in America is Changing." Now, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median age for marriage is about 26 for a woman and 28 for a man. An increase in higher education, and people getting established in careers, have been large parts of this societal shift, Amato says.

"Most people still want to get married ... they just do it later," he says.

Although about half of women married, often successfully, while still in their teens decades ago, teen marriages today seldom last a lifetime, and often are fraught with unplanned pregnancies or dysfunctional family backgrounds, Amato says.

People who married at a young age by today's standards -- from the late teens into the early 20s -- say that they shared many more precious years with their partners, grew with them, avoided some loneliness and missed the heartaches of some romantic breakups.

Betty Rubright, 78, of Murrysville, has a strongly favorable opinion about early marriage that she loves to share with others. She has been married to Stanley, 82, for 60 years. The couple were 18 and 22, respectively, when they married, and had all four of their children by the time Betty Rubright was 25.

"I feel that as young people, you grow together," she says. "You hear of so many divorces nowadays. ... They're older when they're getting married, and I think they're all set in their ways.

"As you're growing up, you're growing together, and you're learning," Betty Rubright says.

Yet people who married at an older age -- at least the late 20s, and often years or even decades later -- say that they were able to experience much more in life before settling down. Couples who married later also say they were able to settle into stable places in their lives and find themselves, rather than marry someone while they were in a transition phase, and likely grow apart later.

Sykut, who lives with Parker in Brighton Heights, says he had no particular age in mind for when he might marry. He says he is happy that he found love in the timing that it happened; Sykut was engaged to someone else in his mid-20s, and says the marriage wouldn't have worked. He says he matured and changed more in recent years.

His current relationship, Sykut says, "just happened so effortlessly. Everything just seemed to line up in the right way."

"Everyone talks about what's an ideal age," he says. "Everybody goes through that (journey) and it's at their own pace."

While there may be something to the "finding yourself" theory about later marriages, Amato says that is not necessarily true.

"I think that some people find themselves through marriage," he says. "Marriage can be an incredible journey of self-discovery and self-growth."

The bottom line• According to Amato's research, once people are in their early 20s -- assuming they have reached a certain level of emotional maturity and are with the right partners -- marriages have just as good a chance of working at 21 as they do at 40 and beyond.

Amato says one of the disadvantages to waiting for marriage is that many of the good potential partners are taken, and you may indeed be set in your ways and accustomed to a single lifestyle. But there's a trade-off, he says.

"On the other hand, you're more emotionally mature and economically mature, and those are good things," Amato says. "People change throughout their life. ... The point is to find someone you can grow and change with."

Finding the right person, no matter what the age, is the key, he says. Some people would love to have married at a younger age, but the right love just hasn't happened yet.

Pauline Arnold, 74, of Tarentum, says she is grateful that love happened early in life for her. She was married to her late husband, Robert, for 45 years before he passed away in 1998. She married her first love at age 19, and had her first of their four sons just a year later. The years together bred so much loyalty and common ground, she says.

"I don't think I'd have it any other way," Arnold says. "We were very close and discussed a lot of things. ... I think you get to know each other, and you sort of have a knowledge of what each other wants to do."

Additional Information:

With this ring...

Estimated median age at first marriage

1930: 24.3 for men; 21.3 for women

1940: 24.3 for men; 21.5 for women

1950: 22.8 for men; 20.3 for women

1975: 23.5 for men; 21.1 for women

2000: 26.8 for men; 25.1 for women

Source: From the U.S. Census Bureau

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