World’s longest-married couple reveals key to a lasting relationship: ‘We love each other’ | US news
The husband and wife from Miami, who recently won the title of the world’s longest married couple, say that they achieved this success only by loving each other.
“We love each other,” said 107-year-old Eleanor Gittens. LongeviQuest When the website specializing in people in their second century of life asked what the secret of her 83-year marriage to husband Lyle was.
By the way, 108-year-old Lyle Gittens’ answer to this question was: “I love my wife.”
The Gittenses’ heartwarming words about each other come as LongeviQuest’s global fact-checking commission confirmed that they are the longest married couple in the world, using the couple’s 1942 marriage certificate, U.S. census records and decades of cross-referenced archival material.
A Nov. 4 news article from LongeviQuest said the Gittenses received the title after Brazil’s death in October. Manoel Angelim Dino. Dino, 106, and his wife of 85 years, Maria de Sousa Dino, 102, were LongeviQuest’s longest married couple in the world as of February.
LongeviQuest’s article stated that the Gittenses are also the world’s oldest married couple and their combined age is more than 216 years. The article suggested that the couple’s love story was extraordinary in that they survived war and other hardships.
Lyle and Eleanor Gittens first met in 1941 at a college basketball game at Clark Atlanta University that he attended as a spectator. Eleanor told LongeviQuest she couldn’t remember whether Clark Atlanta won or the historically black university’s crosstown rival Morehouse College. All he remembers was meeting Lyle for the first time, who was later inducted into the men’s basketball hall of fame at Clark Atlanta.
The two fell in love and planned to marry, although they were sure Lyle would be drafted into the army due to the second world war. They married on June 4, 1942, after Lyle was given a three-day leave of absence from training at a U.S. army base in Georgia.
The wedding day was the first time Lyle met Eleanor’s family. He recalled having to ride to LongeviQuest to his bride in a racially segregated train car; It was a long journey, before the dawn of the civil rights era in the United States, that Lyle says was worth it because of Eleanor.
When Lyle went to Italy to serve in the U.S. Army’s 92nd Infantry Division, Eleanor couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever see him alive again. West Side Gazette. She was already pregnant with the first of her three children and moved to New York, where she met her husband’s family for the first time.
While Eleanor supported her family by making payroll for an aircraft parts manufacturer, she and Lyle stayed in touch through a series of letters. As Eleanor recalled to LongeviQuest, the military censored the letters so heavily that many of Lyle’s words were redacted rather than visible.
Eleanor and Lyle eventually settled in New York after the war and began to build their lives together. They passed New York’s civil service exam together, pursued careers in government work, and traveled, including Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Eleanor’s favorite destination.
He was 69 when he received his doctorate in urban education from Fordham University in the Bronx. The duo also spent decades as active members of the Clark Atlanta alumni association before moving to Miami to be closer to their daughter, Angela.
Lyle said he missed New York and admitted he couldn’t quite believe his marriage to Eleanor was a record-breaker. But he said he was happy to stay with Eleanor.
“I’m happy to be here,” Lyle told LongeviQuest in a video posted on the organization’s website. YouTube page. “We enjoy spending time together… [and] “We did a lot of things together.”
