More than likely, Chuck, your experience is the result of flying a huge number of hours but, through being a good pilot, you have not made any c0ckups, so your engine failures were caused by factors beyond your control.
The average UK PPL flies ~ 30hrs/year. Setting aside the fact that most of them pack it in for good within a year or two, those that remain for the long term probably accumulate below 1000hrs before they give up (due to old age / loss of medical etc). The long-time pilots I know are in that category, with 1 or 2 in the 2000hr range.
With such low hours being flown, I would not expect PPLs to see a lot of engine failures, in certified engines whose MTBF is believed to be of the order of 50k hrs.