They took a long time getting to the top, the only reward for the long years of waiting being that when they had their own newspapers, both knew what they wanted and firmly set about getting it.

他们花了很长时间才达到顶峰，多年等待的唯一回报是，当他们有了自己的报纸，他们俩都知道自己想要什么，并坚定地着手去实现它。

youdao

In the old days, it took a long time to count the votes from the November elections.

VOA: special.2009.01.19

So it took a long time for the twenty books that we have to get settled on. And we'll talk about how that actually happened,also,still.

所以很长一段时间之后那27本书,才最终被确定下来，我们会谈及,那是如何实现的。

耶鲁公开课 - 新约课程节选

So what I'm saying now is it took a long time for this to solidify. And one of the things we think made it solidify was the development of codices,a codex.

所以这花了很长一段时间,才得以统一，我们觉得,使它统一的是抄本的出现。

耶鲁公开课 - 新约课程节选

In retrospect, you know, I thought it was such a hard rule because it took me a long time to find a buyer, but it worked out because they didn't have trouble qualifying for a loan.

NPR: Tips on Considering a Condo Purchase

He told the BBC World Service Newshour programme that the offensive "knows the targets it is after, and it took a long time to plan and prepare for this".

BBC: Nigeria army's offensive to continue 'as long as it takes'

He called it the phonograph, and it took a long time for librarians to figure out that the echoes of speech and music that Edison and his successors etched on discs were as important a part of our collective memory as the words that Johannes Gutenberg and his successors printed on paper.

WSJ: Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy | Sightings by Terry Teachout