Time passes quickly…too quickly. One day you’re graduating from high school and the next you’re trying to figure out when to retire. Stuff happened in between, but it doesn’t seem like it could’ve gone by so quickly. But every now and then, you get a chance to slow down and relive the good ol’ days. And that’s just what happened to a couple in Oelwein, Iowa.
Frankie and Royce King were high school sweethearts and married in 1944, in the middle of World War II, according to CBS News. They decided on short notice to get married before Royce shipped out overseas. They didn’t have much of a ceremony, but that didn’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, as they’re now 97 and 98 and have been married for 77 years.
When they’re nurse found out they didn’t have a photographer on their wedding day, she made plans to fix that. She made arrangements to have them “redo” their wedding ceremony, complete with a wedding dress and, of course, a photographer. Both Frankie and Royce were delighted to have the opportunity. “He was really excited to be able to dress up for mom,” their daughter Sue said. “I could just tell by dad’s reaction of how he was touched to see mom in such a beautiful gown standing in front of him.”
So, now they have their wedding photos and, of course, each other. Their daughter summed it up beautifully, “Something to take away [from this story] would be, they’ve been through a lot — as anybody does — year after year. And through struggles and good times, they’ve managed to find a way to put their love and devotion above everything else to make it work.”