Yellow shirts in love: Couples secure marriages, track at Indy 500

SPEEDWAY, Ind. (WISH) — There’s romance in the ranks of the yellow shirts at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

News 8’s Indianapolis 500 correspondent Laura Steele spoke with two couples who proudly wear yellow.

Two husband-and-wife duos who work at the track say they wouldn’t spend the month of May anywhere else.

Richard and Wanda Lewis, married for 60 years, are working their 16th year at IMS.  

“Well we retired and we were sitting around home, and my wife said, ‘What are we going to do now?” And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ and she said, ‘Let’s go to the speedway and get a job.” And so we did and the next day we were working here and we’ve been ever since,” said Richard and Wanda.

The Lewises say their work at the track has been great for their marriage.

“We have never worked together before, and last year we were 18 inches apart, our desks were, and we found we could get along very well,” said Wanda.

“What I can’t do, she can do, and that covers a big area,” Richard said.

Pam and Ken Lemmon have been married for 44 years.

“We came here 12 years ago to visit and the rest is history. We have been part of this and got invited to other tracks and it’s a love. We love the racing environment and we love the fans,” Ken said.

“We just love spending time together all the way across the board,” said Pam.

The Lemmons said they don’t tend to deal with too many fans or attendees who make their jobs stressful.

“You know you don’t meet too many people, they want to be here or they wouldn’t be here,” Pam said.

“Very rarely do we meet anybody who’s out of sorts out here. So we enjoy it and the people that work for us enjoy it and that’s the main thing,” said Ken, whose shirt is white because he’s actually higher up in the ranks.

The color of love in the month of May is yellow.