Oldest Couple on Record to Marry
Getting married in their 90s, this couple finds true love and sets a world record. Read their story.

http://www.csa.us/email/spirit/ssarticles/0612SeniorSpotlight.html

A 98-year-old retired Brooklyn veterinarian, Allan Marks, and his 95-year-old girlfriend, Lillian Hartley, appear to have set a new record as the oldest couple to marry.

They were dressed casually for the ceremony at a California county clerk’s office, but both were very happy.

“I love you,” Marks told his bride as they embraced.

Hartley responded with the same sentiment, but it’s not clear if her new husband could actually hear her because his hearing aid was on the blink.

After the quick two-minute wedding ceremony, they had lunch at a nearby International House of Pancakes. The newlyweds then returned to their Palm Springs condo where the new bride helped her groom adjust his hearing aid.

“I don’t know what will happen,” Lillian told The Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs. “I want to be together for all eternity, and I’m not taking any chances. We’re the Romeo and Juliet of senior citizens.”

“We celebrate every day,” she said. “I might go to Swiss Donut and have one of the nice donuts.”

Although it still needs to be verified, their marriage appears to have broken the Guinness World Record for oldest combined age of a couple on their wedding day, the paper reported. The Marks’ have lived a combined 193 years, eight months and five days. That would break a record previously held by a French couple – he was 96, she was 94 – who married in 2002. When told their marriage could be a record-breaker, Lillian laughed once more. “Oh, I’m impressed with myself,” she said.

A Boston widow, Lillian said she fell for the smooth-talking widower 18 years ago when he complimented her dress after a Yom Kippur service at a Palm Springs synagogue.

Lillian said she told him it was “just an old rag.” But she knew then that “he got me.” “I’m not deeply religious, but I just think it was meant to be,” she said. “I didn’t want a relationship. I enjoyed my freedom.”

But after that fateful day, the couple began “living together in sin,” she said with a grin. Together, they made regular trips to Cancun, tuned in to watch Los Angeles Lakers games and continued attending temple.

“We’re not what you would call couch potatoes,” Lillian told The Desert Sun.

Between them, the Marks’ have seven adult children, 11 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

And by getting married on February 29 during a leap year, they’ve managed to thumb their noses at time – their first wedding anniversary isn’t until 2016.

Adapted from an article in the New York Daily News.