After over 70 years of happy marriage, an elderly American couple has both died within 12 hours of each other.
Virginia man Herbert DeLaigle died at 2.20am on Friday morning and his wife Frances died at 2.20pm the same day.
Herbert was 94 and Frances was 88.
The pair had met in a Waynesboro café 71 years ago when Frances was just 16 and Herbert was 22.
- Elderly man with dementia renews wedding vows with wife
- Couple with 55 year age difference claim they're 'deeply in love', starting family
"I kept seeing her going in and out in and out and I had my eyes set on her," Herbert told wrdw.com in 2018.
"And then I finally got the nerve to ask her if she would go out with me sometime."
After a year of dating, the pair was engaged. Their wedding was very nearly cancelled however.
"He was always late," said Frances in the same interview.
Herbert says the pastor almost refused to marry them because they were an hour late, but after pleading with him, he rushed the ceremony through.
It cost them $5.
Frances told wrdw.com her husband kept her laughing throughout her life.
The husband and wife worked together at the plant centre which Frances owned and operated, Marilyn's Nursery, according to their obituaries.
Their surviving family said in a statement the timing of their deaths is "amazing."
"It's amazing how they were together for 71 years and now they are together in Heaven. What an amazing love story that is."
Newshub.
