Gottfried Schmelzer and Ursula celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary on Friday.
According to DPA, the Schmelzers are the longest-married couple in Germany.
For Schmelzer, it was love at first sight.
“We hit it off from the very first moment,” says the 102-year-old in his flat in Bad Sobernheim, south-west of the German city of Mainz.
Schmelzer said he met his wife Ursula while working for an administrative authority in Berlin.
They married soon afterwards exactly 80 years ago in 1944.
“I was just 19 and my husband 22,” 98-year-old Ursula said, remembering their wedding.
“He had come to Berlin from Romania a year earlier.
“Love at first sight? No,” she says. But: “He was persistent. He wanted me. And then I had nothing against it.”
Schmelzer explains: “I accompanied her to the train, and when she said goodbye, I went with her, and from then on I always went with her.”
The couple said that they can look back on an eventful life with many stops and journeys that they still remember fondly today.
“We take a lot of trips down memory lane,” she says about the conversations with her husband.
“Our wedding had a few stumbling blocks,” recalls the 102-year-old. The necessary papers could not be found because the Berlin registry office responsible had been bombed out.
“Then the phone calls started.” The papers had been stored in the Harz Mountains. Schmelzer set off immediately. “We were able to get married the next day.”