Valentine’s Day comes only once a year, but for these people, love is eternal.
On Wednesday, more than 60 long-term couples showed up at Midtown’s Empire Steakhouse for a vow renewal ceremony to celebrate the day and talk about how they kept the flame alive.
Among them were George Templeton, 80, and his wife of 56 years, Elaine, 77, who remembered the first time they met like it was yesterday.
“The moment I saw her, she was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Why couldn’t I marry her?” George told the Post, sitting at a table and looking at Elaine.
He had one simple piece of advice for newlyweds to make their marriage last. Don’t be too loud.
“The reason marriages don’t work for young people today is because they want everything to be absolutely perfect. It’s not a perfect world. There’s good and bad, but you have to accept it all. It has to be,” George said.
Former Congressman George Hochbruckner, 85, and his wife Carol, 83, first met at a dance at Stony Brook University in 1960.
Carol said George’s dancing skills were outstanding. He was dancing “Lindy.”
“It was a fast dance,” George explained.
Their marriage wasn’t guaranteed from the start—at least not for Carol.
“I wasn’t very sure about him at first. He was a little arrogant,” Carroll told a Post reporter about her husband in his youth.
“Probably when I was in the Navy,” George joked. But the former sailor knew Carroll right away, he said.
“When I first met her, I said to her friend, ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’ She didn’t know it at the time, but that was my intention. So, I think it was love at first sight for me. But I had to work on her,” George said.
In the end, George won over Carol, and the two ended up sharing a bond that would last for 62 years.
“We went on a few dates, and probably after about three months of dating, I knew I loved him,” Carol said.
The Hochbruckners believe that their sense of humor led to their long-standing bond, as well as love and respect.
“It all boils down to a basic formula: Love, respect, and have a sense of humor. Be able to laugh at yourself,” George says of why he and Carol have remained married for so long. I talked about what happened.
They joined 59 other couples in a mass vow renewal ceremony officiated by Mayor Eric Adam’s Chief Counsel Ingrid Lewis.
The event, hosted by Empire Steakhouse, included cake and food. Many of the couples brought old wedding photos and wore red for their romantic day, including Alice and Fred Massa. The 72-year-olds advised those looking for love not to be afraid to date someone who is their opposite.
“The only thing we have in common, which we always joke about, is that we have good morals and love to eat,” Fred said.
A few months into their relationship, on a car ride home from Montreal, they decided to tackle the adage that attracts opposites head on.
“On the way back from Montreal, we realized we didn’t have much in common. So we talked about things I’d done that he hadn’t, or things he liked and I’d done. We made a list of 23 things that we don’t have and decided to buy tickets for them. I bought tickets to Broadway and he bought tickets to hockey. And once we’ve done those 23 things, we ask ourselves, “Does this work?” I said, “Let’s check it out.” And by the time 23 things were done, we were getting married at the New York Botanical Garden,” Alice said.
“She took me to the ballet, and it was Mikhail Baryshnikov. I was looking at this guy flying through the air and I was like, I wonder if he’s on a rope or something? That’s me. “It was my first encounter with ballet. Now we go to see ballet all the time,” Fred said.
“We opened ourselves physically to new things and we opened our hearts,” he said.
