“I just love my wife,” is Lyle’s matter-of-fact response. “We enjoy our time together and have done a lot together over all these years.”
Eleanor and Lyle are proof that love has no expiration date. In 1941, the cheerleader and the star of the Clark Atlanta University basketball team met. A year later they got married.
Their marriage, on June 4, 1942, where they promised each other eternal loyalty, has lasted to this day, and that is a world record. For the wedding in the middle of the war, the groom, who had now been called up by the army, was given three days’ leave.
A few weeks later, after basic military training in Georgia, Lyle was sent to Italy with the 92nd Infantry Division. Eleanor was pregnant with their first child. The letters Lyle wrote to his new wife were blocked by military censors.
Oldest married couple moved to New York
After World War II the family moved to New York. Eleanor and Lyle went to work for the government and had two more children. After her retirement, Eleanor obtained a doctorate at the age of 69. Eleanor and Lyle now live in Miami and are cared for by their daughter Angela and her niece Johnyta.
With a combined age of 216 years and 132 days, Eleanor and Lyle are not only the oldest living married couple, but also the oldest married couple ever, confirms Guinness World Records.