Couple nearly 100 years old find love and marry
There's no age limit on love. Maybe your hands are a little less familiar as time has stolen their smoothness and the reflection in the mirror more like your mother than you remember. Maybe you've sent your last child off to college years after a divorce when the coffee chats with your single neighbor start feeling a little more romantic.
Love really can come to you at any time no matter which one of life's season you've just survived and it often comes along when you least expect it. Unexpected love is exactly what Jo Cartwright experienced when she and Bernard Snyder became friends while living in their retirement home, Westminster. The pair were both widowed from marriages spanning several decades.
Cartwright, the younger of the two, at a young 96-years-old was married for 67 years before her husband passed away and Snyder, who is 98, was previously married for 73 years. These two obviously know a thing or two longevity in a relationship but Cartwright wasn't looking for a partner when her now husband first laid eyes on her. At the time, she was simply trying to figure out how to eat a comically large piece of chicken.
“She’s sitting there and she's looking at this chicken. And she looks so helpless. I mean, it was just hilarious. I had to find out who she was,” Snyder tells KUT News.
two people standing on brown wooden floor
Photo by Marc A. Sporys on Unsplash
The pair were both dining at a restaurant in Austin, Texas, where they reside at Westminster and something about Cartwright trying to wrestle with the chicken on her plate sparked adoration in Snyder. But after being married to her previous husband for so long, she hadn't thought about being romantically interested in anyone since he died, especially not with Snyder. She knew of him prior to his wife's death and didn't consider him to be a possible suitor. It was Snyder who opened the eyes of Cartwright to the possibility of companionship.
"When I first met him [Snyder], he was married and his wife was not well," Cartwright Snyder explains to KVUE. "He was so gentle and kind, and I thought the world of him as a person, never thinking about a future with him. But I thought he was such a fine man."
Snyder had been lonely since his wife passed away in 2017 so when Cartwright caught his attention, he couldn't get her out of his head...or out of his sight.
“Wherever I was, he was there,” the new bride tells the news outlet. “I would look up and there he was right there. And I thought, ‘Well, maybe this man — maybe he likes me a little bit.’”
He more than liked her a little, Snyder was absolutely lovestruck by her, eventually working up the nerve to ask her to be his dinner partner. It worked. The two spent more and more time together and before long, Cartwright realized she was falling in love with her new beau. Since they're both in their late 90s, they didn't waste any time tying the knot in a ceremony planned by their kids.
red and white eat, drink, and be married signage near brown tree
Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash
"She fell for him and all the flattery and the sweet things he said to her and how he treated her, it was amazing to watch it," Cartwright's daughter shares with KENS 5.
"You never imagine that a 96- and a 98-year-old are going to find each other and fall in love and be happy. Bernard is just such a gentleman. I can see why mom got swept off her feet," Drew, Cartwright's son says to KVUE.
The couple plan to spend their remaining days together no matter how long or short their time may be. Love has no timeline and these two are a testament to that notion.