After 70 Years Of Meeting Each Other, Beautiful Aged Couple Finally Tie the Knot
It took 70 years for Katie Smith aged 89 and Ed Sellers aged 88, to tie the knot on July 16 at a Community Pentecostal church in Stanley, North Carolina. The teenage lovebirds dated in the early 1940s at ages 14 and 15 years old under very strict religious guidelines that only allowed a chaperoned courtship.
Katie’s grand daughter Stefanie Helsel told ABCNews, that the two grew apart and went on to marry other people to have happy, lifelong marriages until they were both widowed. Smith’s husband passed away 17 years ago from cancer and Sellers’ wife died four years ago after battling the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
It was revealed that neither Smith nor Seller had forgotten about each other as a year and a half ago he got the nerve to call her. For these two it must have been true love seven decades in the making. Even with the fact they stayed apart for so long, it did not take them much time to reconnect. Seller said:
“I came and got her number out of the phone book and started calling and she wouldn’t answer for a while, I drove from my home in Kannapolis to Stanley, about 45 minutes away to where Smith lived. When we finally reconnected, we both picked up from where we left off.”
Helsel said:
“They had not seen each other for about 70 years, they hit it off and they rekindled a friendship and the friendship grew to seem like they hadn’t even been apart. He would visit her twice a week because she’s very religious so he could never stay over.
Wednesday and Sunday he’d stay with her in the morning and drive back in the evening. He probably asked her for six months to marry him and she finally agreed. He tells the story that he doesn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the times he asked.”
The wedding was a family affair with Smith’s daughter officiating and about 50 other relatives in attendance. As Helsel began planning the ceremony with her mom, they realized the nuptials would last longer than expected with all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren wanting to participate in ways.
So they had to come up with a clever solution to allow the elderly bride and groom to sit throughout the ceremony in rocking chairs. The newly wed couple also honored their late spouses – Cecil Smith and Dot Sellers – with pictures displayed at the ceremony.
Smith and Sellers admitted that they were lucky as they have not only found true love once, but twice, in their lifetime. The bride told ABC reporter that her best part of the big day was when the preacher pronounced them man and wife. Smith concluded by saying that it was the same for him.
“I was always taught that when you got married, you married til death. And that’s the way we looked at it. And we were, and we will again, as for saying I do for the second time.
Photo credit: ABCNews
Wow! Congratulations to them.
wow
Congrats to them