The "longest married couple" in America have just one key word of advice to couples seeking everlasting love this Valentine's Day: Devotion.
John Betar, 104, and Ann Betar, 100, from Connecticut have been married for 83 years and have never been apart since they eloped on Nov. 25, 1932 and got married soon after, USA TODAY and Reuters reported.
Ann was just 17 when she decided to go with John, 21 at that time, to start a new life together to foil Ann's father's plan to marry her to a man she didn't like and who was 20 years older than her.
The two left their neighbourhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut for New York City to face an uncertain future, clinging only on their love for each other for support.
At that time in 1932, the Great Depression was at its height, Franklin D. Roosevelt had just been elected president, and Adolf Hitler was about to come to power in Germany. "We have watched the world change together," John Betar told Reuters. "The key [to a lasting love] is to always agree with your wife."
John and Ann raised their family in Bridgeport, where John ran a grocery store before becoming a realtor.
The couple teamed up with online home service marketplace, Handy, to answer questions on Twitter about how to make love last. People can tweet questions to the @Handy Twitter account with the hashtag #LongestLove through the week and on Valentine's Day.
To mark the occasion, USA TODAY Network asked the Betar couple a few questions via email about their relationship and modern-day dating.
Asked to comment on why people are now getting married a little older these days, Ann said, "We were just lucky, it was the times, we didn't live in an environment where you met lots of people. It was a smaller community. I do think if you wait, you have more sense in your head."
John commented: "These days everything goes. People can just live together."
Their advice for today's young lovers?
John: "Things are just so different now. I like the old-fashioned way."
In an earlier interview with ABC, John added: "Get along. Compromise. Live within your means and be content. And let your wife be the boss."
Ann: "If you're going to marry somebody and think you can change them you're crazy. You can't. Don't think you can ... And try not to let your desires get in the way."
USA TODAY asked them what they love most about each other.
Ann: "John is a very giving man, in all ways. But ... he has a stubborn mind, so you just have to go with it. Judy [the couple's daughter] is that way too. She has a mind just like her father. They're pretty successful people though so you can't argue with it."
John: "I love that woman. That's all."
Ann: "That's why he's still living with me...he's still trying to figure it out."
John: "I just love her. Her cooking ..."
Ann: "You won't get any romance out of him. It's a devotion."
The couple admitted that they also had fights, just like any other couple. But how did they resolve such fights?
John: 'We just get it out. Then it's done. We forget about it right away. Usually, it's over cooking."
Ann: "You can't always understand their ways...don't try too hard! But it has to be overall acceptable to you."
Interviewed two years earlier by Reuters as reported by the International Business Times, John and Ann went back in time to recall the day they decided to live together.
"Everyone was hopping mad, and my wife's aunt consoled my father-in-law by telling him not to worry, the marriage won't last," said John.
"John was not the boy next door, but the boy across the street who I loved," said Ann.
They said they first became friends when he drove her to high school in his Ford Roadster. "That's why she married me, she loved that car," John joked.
John and Ann raised their family in Bridgeport, where John ran a grocery store before becoming a realtor.
The couple now lives in Fairfield, Connecticut, and has five children, 14 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, the Epoch Times reported.
"That's what makes life what it is. We were fortunate enough to live long enough to see this ... and it's really one of the most gratifying things in the world to see your great-grandchildren, to see your grandchildren become adults," Ann told the Fairfield Citizen.
So what is the secret to long life?
Their daughter Renee Betar answered this question. "They have this wonderful ability to accept life as it comes," she told ABC. "They have a way of trying to look around at the things that they do have—the family and the blessings. They came from a generation where there is such respect for each other and caring."
