There are a lot of obstacles in the path of love, but the most frequent barrier is age. People say ‘Age is just a number’ but when your date is old enough to be a friend of grandfather, it’s time to retrace whether it’s stature or not. But one couple who accepted each other’s flaws and liked their fate anyway are Gary and Almeda Hardwick.
With the age gap of 53 years, it’s okay to mention that they are an unconventional couple and how quickly they decided to get hooked. In 2016, at the age of 17, a teenager Gary started dating 72-year-old woman Almeda.
The couple got married only after 2 weeks of dating. The teenager met the 72-year-old woman for the first time at a friend’s birthday party. At the funeral of Almeda’s 45-year-old son, the two realized that they felt something for each other.
According to an interview with Barcroft TV, the teenager confessed that he fell in love with this 72-year-old woman Almeda the first time he saw her. He said, “The first thing that attracted me to Almeda was her beautiful, gorgeous blue eyes, her personality, always full of laughter and we just connected so well. Everything was just, the chemistry was great. We had the same interests, you know, interest in music.
Everything about her just captured my heart since day one. We got married two weeks after we first started dating. I knew she was the one and there was no doubt about it. You know a lot of people wait years to get married and everyone has different opinions on getting married quickly, but we knew we were in love. So I jumped on that.”
Almeda said, “I just looked into his eyes and I just fell in love with those brown eyes. I love his hair. Very good-looking, always neat. I just looked at him and knew he was the one I wanted to be spending my life with.” Almeda was yet not over with the death of her husband Donald before she met Gary. She said, “I wasn’t looking for a young man, but Gary just came along. I just knew straight away that he was the one.”
It was very normal for young Gary to fall in love with an old woman. In fact, before meeting Almeda, Gary was in a relationship with a 77-year-old woman for about two years. Age was never quite a concern for both Gary and Almeda. Gary always had an attraction for the elder woman. Even Almeda was never worried of Gary leaving her for someone else as she knew that Gary didn’t like the younger woman.
Even though Almeda and Gary are in a happy relationship, Gary was little tensed of whether his grandmother would accept their relationship or not. Gary said,” I didn’t know how she’d take it, but she was very accepting of the person I am and happy for us both.”
It is only Almeda’s eldest son who did not approve of her relationship with Gary. Except him, everybody else was okay with it. Anyway, the couple did not let anything stop them and after dating each other for about two weeks, they got hitched.
Though Almeda’s eldest son was against her relationship, her grandchildren always supported her. They even accept Gary as their friend and not as their grandfather. And lastly, the couple is happy as Gary’s grandmother has accepted them.
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