You need no more than an approximate date to quickly find your event. Then, as now, marriages and deaths were chronicled in the same spot of the paper. If you must hurry thorough, you can scan the records in very little time. When you find your event, you find more than the date. Even in the sketchiest of marriage records, you are likely to find the names of the witnesses, as well as the pastor who married the couple.
Information given in obituaries varies greatly.
It may be a single line, or a startling headline. You will quickly see that straight-line research is a waste of time when reading newspapers. Researching ALL children of a descendant yields exponential results. It may be the meekest, loneliest unmarried sister who died in a slow news week. So, make a list of all the events for the entire family in date order.