After dating for nearly 30 years (talk about taking it slow!), George Kirby, 102, and Doreen Luckie, 91, plan to tie the knot on Kirby's 103rd birthday this June.
Thanks to some nudging from their seven adult children, Kirby finally proposed to Luckie this past Valentine's Day. "We were having dinner, and I asked Doreen if she wanted to be married to me for a short time. I was so happy that she said yes," he told The Telegraph. "I didn't get down on one knee, because I don't think I would have been able to get back up."
The English couple met in 1988 through a service that helps seniors find companions. The former boxer was matched up with Luckie, a former typist, due due to their likes and dislikes. They live "in sin" in a hotel owned by Kirby's son in Eastbourne, East Sussex.
The web-savvy great-grandfather of seven wrote on his Facebook page, "I'm told that the Guinness Book of Records has officially accepted that Doreen and I will be the oldest couple in the world to marry, with our combined ages of 194 years 281 days on 13th June; beating the current record, which was a French couple who got married with a combined age of 191 years 126 days. Who would have thought it. I need a lie down now to think about it more."
For his part, Kirby seems to be reveling in his new-found fame. "We seem to have made every national newspaper. Good job I didn't marry her years ago," he quipped in a recent Facebook post.
This will be Kirby's fourth marriage and Luckie's third.
—Kristen Klein
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