First unofficial date. A proposal in the atrium. Spent the first night of married life together at the hotel. Over the years, West Baden has been home to countless such love stories.
None of them, though, are quite like the one Gene and Ruth share.
Just married on November 30, Gene and Ruth are newlyweds at the age of 82. They’d both had loving marriages for over 50 years before losing their spouses. But as time passed, they rediscovered each other — and a new marriage that neither expected.
“You can say we’re very optimistic about life,” Gene says. “We’re the fortunate ones; we found love twice in our lives.”
A little backstory: Gene and Ruth graduated high school together — the class of 1956 — but back then, they were just casual friends. Gene married his high school sweetheart, who was friends with Ruth throughout high school.
A few years ago when Gene’s wife was ill, he created a Facebook account to provide updates about how she was doing. Ruth happened to see it. She had been widowed just a few years before.
When Gene’s wife passed, he wanted to do a memorial for her and learned Ruth was an artist, so he enlisted her help to put something together.
“Ruth and I had not seen each other in 60 years,” Gene says. “One thing just kind of led to another; we found we had a lot in common and enjoyed each other’s company.”
Gene lived in Kentucky and made 6-hour round trips to see Ruth in Indiana. And just like any couple, there was that lingering question: What to do on those initial first dates?
“I asked my daughter, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with him all day long,’” Ruth recalls. “And she said, ‘Why don’t you take him to French Lick?’ So we did, and it turned out it was just a wonderful place to be — beautiful, and there was a harpist playing (in the atrium at West Baden), and we had lunch and walked all around the grounds and laughed and just had a great time.”
They got engaged in April of 2016, and now finally married 4 1/2 years later, Gene jokes that “we hold the world record for the longest engagement of octogenarians.”
And how’s this for a fairytale wedding night? Dinner at 1875: The Steakhouse in a private room overlooking the gardens. And a real-life snow globe scene to admire on their shuttle ride back to West Baden.
“It was just beautiful — the snow was blowing around, and all the Christmas lights were on. it was truly just beautiful,” Ruth recalls.
A perfect day with the perfect person. A marriage later in life “is the kind of thing you never think would ever happen to you again,” Ruth says. But Gene and Ruth are proof positive it’s never too late to find love.
“We both feel this was pre-destined for us. When you think about how many years had passed and what our situations in life were when we got together, we don’t think this was just coincidence,” Gene says. “It’s been a real wonderful thing for both of us to have this relationship and to now be married, we just kind of have to pinch ourselves to really believe this is where we are in life.”