On 8 June, an American couple will be married in an old chapel in the French town of Carentan-les-Marais near the historic Normandy beaches. It will be a very special and rare event as only locals are wed there.
The mayor, Jean-Pierre Lhonneur, is making Harold Terens and his fiancee, Jeanne Swerlin, an exception to the rule as Terens helped to liberate France from the Nazi occupiers during World War II.
Terens is among the war veterans to be honored by the French on 6 June as part of the 80th anniversary celebration of their country’s liberation from the Nazis, KKTV reports.
The nuptial is also a rare event as Terens is 100 years old and Swerlin is 96. Both widowed, they met years ago at a camp attended by their grandchildren, where they were introduced to each other by a relative and friend, and began dating in 2021.
Meanwhile, Marjorie Fiterman and Bernie Littman got married earlier, on 19 May, after 10 years of dating.
Rabbi Adam Wohlberg, who officiated the wedding, said the couple were unlike most others that he’d married because they did not meet on a dating app, Fox News reports. Wohlberg said Fiterman and Littman lived in the same building, bumped into each other and fell in love.
Both former students at the University of Pennsylvania and widowed, they met in their assisted living facility during a costume party and began dating over nine years ago, Littman’s granddaughter, Sarah Sicherman, told Fox News.
The wedding of Fiterman and Littman is more unique as they set a world record for the oldest aggregate age of a newly married couple. Their combined age is 202 years as Fiterman is 102 while Littman is 100.
The two broke the Guinness World record set by Doreen and George Kirby of England, who had a combined age of 194 years, 279 days when they wed on 13 June 2015, according to Fox News.