By TRICIA NEAL
The two are growing old gracefully together, sharing loving glances and inside jokes. They’ve built a home together. They go to church. She loves to cook. He plays golf when he can and tends their garden.
Their obvious admiration for each other could almost fool an onlooker into thinking they’re newlyweds.
Actually, they are.
And that’s just part of this couple’s unique love story.
While many couples in their 80s begin settling in for the winter of their lives, Johnny and Marie are doing quite the opposite — eating healthier and becoming more active in an effort to stay in shape.
They’re doing this because they each have had health scares — but they’re also doing it because they feel they have something to live for.
These two hearts were meant to keep beating.
Their love story is far from over.
A romance rekindled
Johnny and Marie attended Eubank High School together in 1941. He was a senior. She was a freshman.
In those days, many students graduated early. In spite of their differences in grade levels, the two were both 16.
The students were “fond of each other,” they admit, and they courted for a year.
“But we were too young,” Marie recalls.
After Johnny graduated, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to work for Federated Department Stores. When World War II rolled around, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines.
In spite of their distance, Johnny and Marie kept their relationship alive for two more years in the form of love letters.
But the war took Johnny to the scenes of some of the toughest fighting. He fought in four major conflicts — one being the famous battle at Iwo Jima.
Over time, the letters from Johnny stopped coming.
“So one day I got a ‘Dear John’ letter,” Johnny recalls.
Marie was hurt that Johnny had stopped writing.
“I thought he’d forgotten me,” she says.
“I was fighting for my life. I didn’t have time to write,” he says.
Marie eventually married another man, moved to Dayton, Ohio, and started a family.
Johnny came home from the war in 1945. He, too, married in 1952, returned to his job in Cincinnati, and became a father.
The former high school sweethearts would live within 50 miles of each other for several decades without ever knowing it.
Johnny was married for nearly 50 years before his wife passed away.
After his wife’s death, he continued to live in Cincinnati, passing his time playing golf and visiting with friends. But he missed the constant companionship to which he had become accustomed.
He told his daughter, “When you settle in at night to watch television by yourself, it gets a little bit lonely.”
A few years ago, Eubank High School held a reunion. Johnny didn’t attend, but he heard from some of his old classmates that his former girlfriend, Marie, had also become a widow and had moved back to Pulaski County from Dayton.
He called her on a whim — and they talked for three hours.
After all, it takes a while to get caught up on more than 50 years of life events.
The two kept in touch, and, eventually, Johnny decided to move back to Pulaski County as well.
On Feb. 21, 2004, Johnny and Marie were married in a ceremony at Oak Hill Baptist Church — complete with bridesmaids, groomsmen, and a full-blown reception.
This year, they built a new home together.
Keeping love alive — and healthy
Early this year, as Johnny and Marie were looking forward to celebrating their second anniversary, the couple received a startling wake-up call concerning their health.
Marie awoke at 4 a.m. with a nagging pain in her back between her shoulders.
Johnny tried to rub her back to ease the pain, but it persisted.
“It was aching across my shoulders, and it wouldn’t go away,” she recalls.
The couple finally decided they should go to the hospital.
On February 9, Marie underwent triple bypass surgery. She had suffered a heart attack.
Just as she was recovering from her surgery, Johnny was faced with troubles of his own.
He awoke one morning feeling pressure in his chest.
“It felt like somebody was sitting on my chest,” he says.
“It was a heavy weight.”
As it turned out, he, too, needed heart surgery. He underwent a quadruple bypass on June 30.
“We’ve had a year of downhill,” Johnny says, adding that also, in the course of this year, he has had a cancerous spot removed from his cheek, a blockage removed from his carotid artery, and an injured shoulder.
Now this couple is taking “for better or for worse” and “in sickness and in health” side by side, literally.
Both are attending cardiac therapy sessions at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital.
“I enjoy it — it seems to be helping,” Marie says.
She also says it helps to be undergoing therapy with her husband.
Johnny and Marie, now both 81 years old, were in good overall health before this year — but now they are taking greater precautions to make sure they are able to share many more years together.
“We always tried to take care of our health, but after we married, we got a little careless about our eating habits,” Marie admits.
“We were eating late at night a lot of times. Now we’ve stopped that. I knew better, and he did too. This was a lesson for us.” n
