This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake City has been ranked as the nation's No. 1 city for happy marriages by the RealAge Test.
The test was created in 1998 to measure "real age" versus traditional calendar age, with positive factors such as regular exercise lowering the "real age" and negative factors such as an unhappy divorce raising "real age," said Mike Roizen, RealAge Test founder.
He based his list for happy marriages on seven categories of the 151-category test, which about 12 million people took in 2011.
Salt Lake City citizens in happy marriages scored an average of 2.1 years younger on the test, the highest in the nation.
"Marriage was a strong benefit for all Salt Lake City denizens," Roizen said.
Roizen said he wasn't sure what factors may have contributed to Salt Lake City coming out on top, but speculated it may have been a result of a strong religious presence reinforcing a commitment to marriage.
"I had no idea people in Salt Lake City were that happy with marriage," Roizen said.
Roizen said he was surprised to see Los Angeles and San Francisco, both traditionally healthy cities, fall into the bottom 10 of the happy marriage list.
Miami finished last in the rankings, adding on average 1.3 years to apparently unhappy married couples. —
Top 10
Salt Lake City
Greenville, S.C.
Knoxville, Tenn.
Cincinnatti, Ohio
Charlotte, N.C.
Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C.
Hartford, Conn.
Kansas City, Mo.
Grand Rapids, Mich. and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
—
Bottom 10
Buffalo, N.Y.
Denver, Colo.
Memphis, Tenn
Las Vegas, Nev.
San Francisco, Calif.
New York, N.Y.
Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg Fla.
San Diego, Calif.
Los Angeles, Calif. and Miami