These Elderly Couples Prove That True Love Lasts Forever, This Will Warm Your Heart

England-based American photographer Lauren Fleishman had no idea what she was going to stumble upon. In a book next to her bed, she found a series of letters tucked between the pages. They were addressed to her grandmother, sent by his grandfather during Wold War II. The powerful love story of her grandparents inspired Fleishman.

“My grandparents met on a blind date and were married in 1944 in Goldsboro, North Carolina. They were together for fifty-nine years,” Fleishman stated. “The letters inspired me to seek out and record the love stories of other long-married couples.”

The book, entitled The Lovers, was the result of Fleishman’s hard work. It features couples who have been together for over fifty years, and just like how her grandparents’ story inspired her, this literary work is set to inspire others.

“I wanted to create and work on a project that was a collaboration,” Lauren had said. “In the book, color photographs are combined with recorded interviews where couples together for over five decades talk about their love and relationships. I work as the photographer, but the couples write their own stories through the recorded interview.”

Below are some of the stories that you may find inside the book. (All stories are rewritten in verbatim.)

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Jake and Mary Jacobs (Married in 1948)

Mary: “Jake said to me,’Would it ever be possible for me to marry you?’And I said, ‘Possible but not probable!’ And that’s how it was. It wasn’t likely that I would ever marry him, and he knew that. So when he went home to Trinidad, my mother and father breathed a sigh of relief. But he used to write, and he said, ‘I’m thinking I might come back to England.’”

Dick Dehn and Gary Payne

Dick: “We’ve been together 56 years. A couple of times I’ve thought, yes, I’ve known him longer than I knew my mother. And my mother died in the early ‘80s. I’ve known him, and he’s known me longer than anybody else on this earth. I never regretted it. I don’t know just exactly what love is, but he was the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and we have. To us, love meant that we did not want to be apart. We built our life on each other.”

Watch the interview video below

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Joseph and Dorothy Bolotin (Married in 1938)

Dorothy: “I never think of it in terms of years. I think of it in terms of good years. In love, hot romance doesn’t last forever. So I would say that yes, I think love changes. I would say we’re still in love. We still love each other. It’s focusing, doing little things. He’s an amazing man.”

Sol and Gloria Holtzman (Married in 1954)

Gloria: “I was the kind of girl that I fell in love right away. So the next day, I would tell my friend, ‘Terrific, I mean, I’m in love already.’ But after the first date with Sol, I did not feel that way. I told my friend, ‘No, he was very nice. We had a good time, but that was it.’ She was the one that came back with the statement, ‘I bet this is the guy your gonna end up marrying!’”

Yevgeniy and Lyubov Kissin (Married in 1941)

Yevgeniy: “We met at a dancing party. It was in January 1938. My friend invited me to the party; he said there would be a lot of beautiful young girls. Another cadet with high boots had approached her, but she didn’t like high boots, and so she said no to him. I was the second one to approach her. I had a different uniform, but I’m still not sure if it was my uniform or my face that attracted her to me.”

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Gino and Angie Terranova (Married in 1947)

Angie: “You really don’t think about getting older. First of all, you’re aging together, and when you see a person constantly, you don’t notice big changes.”

Yaakov and Mariya Shapirshteyn (Married in 1949)

Yaakov: “What is the secret to love? A secret is a secret—I’m 75, and I don’t reveal my secrets.”

Leon and Harriett Bolotin (Married in 1943)

Leon: “I always knew it was going to be Harriett.”

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Fred and Francis Futterman (Married in 1945)

Fran: “As you grow older, love changes. It changes because we change.”

Moses and Tessie Rubenstein (Married in 1942)

Moe: “When you’re young, it’s a different type of love than the love we feel now. This is a mature love. That was a young love. It’s like a young wine and a mature wine.”