Lady Marries the Worship of Her Life 43 Years After Her Mom Compelled Her to Cease Interracial Relationship

Every so often happy endings gain even happier.

Ideal 365 days, PEOPLE featured the memoir of a girl who reconnected along with her prolonged-misplaced love after 42 years aside. And exciting about a months within the past, the couple — Stephen Watts and Jeanne Watts (beforehand Gustavson) — bought married!

“When he proposed, I stated, ‘A thousand times certain!'” Jeanne, now 69, tells PEOPLE for the Valentine’s Day particular in this week’s arena. “We’re making an are trying to create up for 42 misplaced years.”

Jeanne and Stephen first met in 1971, when she was once a freshman and he was once a senior at Chicago’s Loyola College.

“He was once my past love. He was once my factual love,” Jeanne stated in closing 365 days’s Worship arena.

But Jeanne’s mom strongly objected to the connection due to she did now not favor her White daughter seeing a Sad man.

“She exciting went ballistic,” Jeanne stated. “She did now not favor this relationship to happen the least bit.”

Soundless, the pair secretly dated for seven years. But after Jeanne graduated nursing faculty and landed a job that required a prolonged rush back and forth and late shifts, she faced difficulties seeing Stephen, who did now not gain a automotive.

“I used to be once fully overwhelmed by the entirety,” Jeanne stated. “The family arena was once repeatedly weighing on me due to it fractured the connection between my mother and myself forever. She was once repeatedly my mother and I repeatedly cherished her, however it affected our relationship for the leisure of my lifestyles.”

The couple talked about marriage, however Jeanne was once horrified of taking that next step.

“I’d’ve misplaced my complete family,” she stated.

Standing at the nurse’s location all the blueprint through her shift one night, Jeanne suggested him over the mobile phone, “I love you, however I exciting cannot gain this.”

Overwhelmed by the news, Stephen was once speechless. It was once an abrupt ending that could cling-out Jeanne for years but to attain back.

“I regretted it then, I regretted the arrive I did it, however I did it,” stated Jeanne.

They’d utilize the subsequent four a protracted time leading separate lives and now now not talking to 1 one more.

Minimize to 2021, when Jeanne was once a divorced retiree whose mother was once now now not alive. She began hunting for Stephen from her dwelling in Cedar Mill, Oregon, however she couldn’t to find him on social media.

“All the pieces came up a tiresome stop after I attempted to survey for him,” she stated. “There was once simply about no hint of him.”

In April 2021, Jeanne found a mailing tackle for his niece and wrote her a letter.

“She suggested me he was once in a nursing dwelling,” Jeanne stated, “and that’s one thing I had by no arrive in a million years imagined.”

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In Could perhaps well also 2021, she referred to as the nursing dwelling and requested for Stephen. A workers member explained that patients did now not beget bedside phones. She wrote him a letter, however there was once no response. She referred to as again, only for a nurse to present a proof for her that he couldn’t discuss on the mobile phone.

Carry out you have to perhaps even beget got a candy memoir the enviornment desires to know? Ship the itsy-bitsy print to love@folks.com for a chance to be featured in Precise-Life Worship, Folks.com’s sequence dedicated to sharing unprecedented connections and heartfelt gestures.

In late June 2021, Jeanne traveled to Chicago to discuss over with him in individual.

“I needed to know: Was he okay? Was he married? Would he forgive me?” she stated.

When she walked into the room, Stephen identified her trusty away, stated her name and began to bawl.

“I knew he aloof cherished me,” she stated.

On Aug. 8, 2021, he moved into her Oregon dwelling — and he is been there ever since.

“She is amazing. She is my coronary heart and soul,” Stephen, now 73, suggested PEOPLE. “I are making an are trying to stay along with her repeatedly.”

Just a few months later, he requested her to marry him. The pair stated “I gain” on Oct. 15, 2022 in entrance of about 65 guests at the couple’s dwelling. Their Norfolk terriers, Tushi and Jeffie, were ring bearers.

“We are in a position to utilize the leisure of our lives collectively making plans,” says the girl who now goes by Jeanne Watts. “I gladly took his closing name. I’ve wished it for an awfully very prolonged time.”