Meet the Couple on the Iconic Woodstock Album Cover

"We hit another state trooper and couldn't get around that,” Nick says. “On the hood of the police car there was a young man wearing moccasins and smoking a joint. Back then, that could get you five years in prison. I thought, What the heck is going on?"

Between walking and hitchhiking, they easily reached Yasgur's field.

"We found the blanket on the way and picked it up,” Bobbi says. “We had not come prepared. We didn't have tickets. We just took the challenge, and we didn't know what to expect. There were thousands of people walking miles and miles, carrying sleeping bags and instruments, and lots of stuff got discarded. When we got on that hill, we couldn't see the stage but we had amazing sound."

Nick says he was especially impressed by Janis Joplin and Sly & the Family Stone, but Bobbi insists the music took a back seat to the audience.

"It wasn't about the artists,” she says. “What I remember the most was the people, the sea of humanity and the commotion all around us. It assaulted your senses and it was so darn exciting. We had never experienced anything like this."

The group did not think to bring meals, and festival concessions had sold out Friday night.

"I don't remember too much about food, except that we didn't go hungry,” says Bobbi, who adds that relief came with donations from townspeople. “I can remember a crate of bananas being passed overhead. The same with loaves of bread. Whatever folks had they just shared."

They shrugged off the muggy heat and downpours.

“At my age now, it would be awful, but when you're 20 and falling in love, it's not an issue,” Bobbi says. “We stood on our patch of ground. I don't think we realized what was really going on until afterward when you started hearing the news reports. There were no phones, no texting. We had no idea how many people were there."

With jobs on the line, they returned home late Sunday night. By the time the soundtrack surfaced months later, “Woodstock was old news,” Bobbi says. “It had left a bad taste in Sullivan County, because there was so much mess and cleanup. Not many people talked about it. But we were so excited and told all our friends about the album cover."

Do they represent the Woodstock generation?

"We were just regular kids in small-town USA,” Nick says. “We had similar ideals of our generation, and the war was a big deal. But we didn't see the racial strife that other people saw. Growing up in a small town, we just got along with everybody."

Nick was a union carpenter and worked for the Office of Community Development in New York's Orange County before retiring five years ago. Bobbi was a registered nurse at Pine Bush Elementary and retired eight years ago. They have two sons, Matthew and Luke, and four grandchildren under 8.

"We aren't Woodstock hippies,” Bobbi says. “We are Grammy and Poppa."

The Ercolines turned 70 this year and will celebrate their 48th wedding anniversary on Aug. 27. The key to their lasting fairy-book romance?

"Don't stay mad,” Bobbi says. “People don't grow at the same rate. You have to be willing to let the other catch up or vice versa. It's never 50-50."

Nick gushes, “My life goal is to dance with my youngest granddaughter at her wedding and have my wife with me."

A large, autographed copy of Burk Uzzle's famous photograph, identical to one in the Smithsonian Institution, hangs in the Ercolines’ kitchen.

"I look at it every single day,” Bobbi says. “It's a wonderful memory of young love and it encapsulates the way we are to this day."

And that immortalized blanket? Nick laughs.

"For the first 20 years, Woodstock was not a big deal in our area,” he says.

"Then people got nostalgic and it became more significant. I didn't think the blanket was that important. We took it to the beach, to picnics, and it started to wear thin. I used to drive a VW Beetle 60 miles to work, and in the middle of winter it got cold, so I used that blanket in the trunk of the bug to block the wind. It finally got destroyed."

In later years, collectors seeking the blanket offered up to $30,000.

"We would have been happy to donate it,” Nick says. “But it was long gone."