So Romantic! 58 Year Old Man Marries 64 Year Old Woman He Fell in Love with 40 Years Ago

A man, Mzee Selemia Ayeko Wandago who had secretly admired a woman, Phyllis Okisa for close to four decades without being able to summon the courage to meet her has finally married her.

Ayeko said: “Finding true love has not been easy, especially after I parted ways with my first wife with whom we bore two sons (now grown-ups) and my second wife who passed away while giving birth, leaving me with three young children.”

Giving details about how they met, Ayeko, from Likoni, Kenya said they knew each other decades ago when Okisa regularly came visiting her sister, who was married to the former’s uncle.

The two love birds confessed that at some point they got attracted to each other, but could not date for fear of stigma associated with relatives (however distant) who fall in love, Standard Digital News reports.

“We knew one another when we were both young. We liked each other, but we were never romantically involved,” says Okisa.

A few months after they met in 1969, the then 17-year-old Okisa got married and gave birth to a baby boy who died a year later while Ayeko, on the other hand, got married and even had a family.

“I developed complications during my second pregnancy while in my 20’s. Things got bad and my uterus had to be removed due ectopic pregnancy-related complications,” says Okisa whose fate was later sealed after her then husband’s relatives got him a second wife whom she couldn’t get along with, leading to a nasty separation.

Years later the two found themselves living in the same neighbourhood at Maweni in Likoni, with Okisa making regular visits as a relative.

“Okisa used to regularly visit and we continued to refer and treat each other as shemeji. My second wife was very kind and welcoming and always welcomed Okisa in our home and treated her like the relative she was,” says Ayeko who confesses that much as he still was attracted to Okisa, he suppressed the affection without knowing that the feeling was mutual.

In 2011 when Ayeko lost his second wife during childbirth due to high blood pressure, he had nobody to take care of him and his young children other than Okisa.

“She would come, wash clothes and cook for me and return to her home. I will never forget 2015 when my hand hurt with mdudu (a painful infection on fingers common at the Coast). No neighbour came to assist me and the three small children but her.”

He says he was touched when she told him she would continue taking care of him and the kids even after his hand healed.

”I told her to come and live with me so that she would take care of the children since she was chased away by her husband for lack of children.

“I had given up on finding love. Ayeko is a blessing to me, says Okisa, a vendor who originally hailed from Luanda in Vihiga County.”

The duo got married at Christ Evangelical Church in Shimanzi with the blessings of Bishop John Oketch Olwande who presided over their union on the 1st of May, 2016.

“I love my husband since he does not drink alcohol.”

Still waxing in love, Ayeko says he intends to take his new wife to meet his relatives now that they are now married.

Photo credit: SDE.co.uk