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See How This Couple Have Been Celebrating Their Wedding Anniversary For 60 Years

See How This Couple Have Been Celebrating Their Wedding Anniversary For 60 Years

Since their first wedding anniversary 60 years ago, Ann and Ken Fredericks of Satellite Beach, have celebrated with a bite from the top layer of their wedding cake.

Every August, the couple toast their long and happy marriage and crack open the metal Maxwell House Coffee can that holds the remains of the cake Ann Fredericks’ grandmother baked six decades ago.

“Everybody just looks at us with these amazed looks when they hear about it,” Ann, 81, said with a chuckle.

“Every year, we unwrap it, pour brandy over it — because you need to moisten it — and we break off a piece,” she said. “Now, our children are appalled that we would be eating something that’s 60 years old. But believe me, it’s quite tasty, as long as it’s got enough brandy on it. And it’s never made us sick.”

The Fredericks got married on Aug. 19, 1955 at Grace Episcopal Church in Nyack, New York.

Ann’s grandmother made the three-layer dark fruitcake using fruit Ann’s grandfather brought home while working on the docks in New York. The cake was baked a couple of months before the wedding so it could age and settle. A local bakery covered it with a hard shell so the fruit wouldn’t bleed through, then a layer of butter cream frosting was applied.

“When you looked at it, it looked like a three-layer white wedding cake,” Ann said.

They get a kick out of teasing their children. They said they’ve offered all three a bite of the cake over the years, but it has always been refused.

“They won’t taste it,” Ken, 85, said.

“And we tell them, it tastes fine,” Ann said. “They always say, ‘Oh, there’s not that much. You two keep it for yourself.’ I don’t know, we may have to be buried with it.”

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After the annual bite, the cake, which is now about 4-by-3 inches big, will be wrapped in Saran and nestled back into its coffee can with a yellowed slip of paper that reads: “Top tier, Ann’s wedding cake.”

“We’re hoping we can do it again next year,” Ken said.

“It has lasted us 60 years, and so has the marriage,” Ann said, “which is much more important than the wedding cake.”

Ken and Ann celebrated their diamond anniversary Saturday night with a dinner at Continental Flambe in downtown Melbourne, surrounded by their children and friends.

Source: FloridaToday

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