“We were always married in our hearts.”
Maybe it’s us, but there’s just something about couples that have been together for decades and are still so in love that turn us into sappy messes. Two women in Iowa who have been in love for 72 years and finally got hitched definitely fit the bill.
On September 6, Vivian Boyack and Alice “Nonie” Dubes, from Davenport, Iowa, exchanged rings and vows at their church in front of 30 people, according to The Des Moines Register. But for decades, their relationship had mostly been kept a secret.
Vivian, 91, and Nonie, 90, both went to the same teaching college and when Nonie saw Vivian for the first time in 1942, Nonie knew she was special, she told The Des Moines Register. “I happened to look up and I noticed her coming out to meet friends. It’s just one of those things. You hear people talk about how they fell in love with their wife or husband on first notice or first viewing and it happened with me, I guess,” Nonie says.
After they finally went on their first date, their relationship grew but they kept their romantic relationship a secret, Vivian told the Iowa newspaper. “We had to keep our relationship quiet of course. I would go to her house on the weekend and that was all the together time we had,” she says. Eventually, the couple bought a house, joined a church, and settled down. But they still didn’t tell anyone about their relationship. Vivian told the paper that it wasn’t until recently that people started asking if they actually were a couple.
In 2009, when Iowa legalized same-sex marriages, Vivian and Nonie talked about it but weren’t sure whether they wanted to “open it up to the whole world,” says Vivian. “We were scared about it,” Nonie says. But five years later, the couple decided it was finally time to make things official.
“She yelled at me for something yesterday, we were so tired, and I said, ‘Don’t you start yelling at me now that we’re married,'” says Nonie.
After all of that, the couple says not much has changed since they tied the knot. “The only difference is that we know that it’s legal and nobody can do anything about it. We’ve always been married in our hearts,” says Vivian.
Watch the video below to hear the sweet couple talk about these memorable moments in their relationship.
