While it was cold outside, the Harbor Links Golf Club in Port Washington was filled with warm emotions last Thursday with more than 91 couples gathered to renew their vows after at least 50 years of marriage on Valentine’s Day.
The couples led by Town Clerk Leslie Gross recited words similar to those they exchanged when they first pledged their love to one another.
In the case of Larry and Ruth Shifman of Lake Success – the couple married longest among those gathered at the town’s 4th annual Valentine’s Day Recommitment Ceremony – that ceremony took place 71 years ago.
It was love at first sight, Ruth said. At least, for one of them.
“With him, yes,” Ruth said, recounting how she and her future husband met at a Valentine’s Day party in 1942. “He wouldn’t let me alone.”
He didn’t waste any time either. The couple was married in June that same year. She was 18 years old. He was 23.
As the oldest among the wedded couples, the Shifmans also re-enacted that symbolic moment when, as man and wife, they fed each other cake.
The stories of whirlwind romances weren’t uncommon among the enduring life partners.
Larry Centola, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, had been knocked unconscious by an artillery shell and caught a piece of shrapnel in his leg.
Released on a convalescent furlough, a friend of his back in New York told him to meet him at a department store where his girlfriend worked. The friend introduced Larry to a girl named Mary, and Centola instantly knew she was the one.
“I told my buddy, ‘That’s the girl for me. I’m going to marry her’,” Centola recalled.
Mary was dating a sailor, but she couldn’t turn this young man down when he asked her out for coffee.
“He was only 120 pounds and shaking. I didn’t have the heart to say no,” Mary said.
They met in July and married the following April. They’ve managed to overlook their differences (she’s a Yankees fan; he’s a Mets fan) with three key ingredients.
“Love, patience and a lot of humor,” said Mary Centola.
The Centolas, New Hyde Park residents since 1950, have been married for 67 years.
Gross offered a testimony to each couple’s dedication as she told them, “You’ve been there for one another through the good times and the rough spots.”
Violinist Graham Silver broke into “If you were the only girl in the world,” and the room of elderly lovers sang along, suddenly sounding a good deal younger.
After the ceremony, the couples were treated to lunch, with a champagne toast, almost as though they were at a wedding reception.
When Dorothy Daly met Frank, her husband of 58 years, for a second time – seemingly by chance – when they were both single, she said she thought God was telling her something.
“It was meant to be. We trust each other and respect each other and we have fun together,” she said, adding, “I wouldn’t trade him in for anything.”
Four daughters, 14 grandchildren and four great grandchildren is the Albertson couple’s legacy to the bond between them.
Recalling their favorite times together, they both recalled a romantic little hotel in the Swiss Alps, and a trip to Paris.
“She’s my everything. She’s my wife, my girlfriend, my everything,” Frank Daly said.
Ada and Edward Galise of New Hyde Park met when he interviewed her for a summer job she was applying for at a plexiglass factory in New York. Ada had come from Puerto Rico to visit her aunt, who lived in Manhattan. She turned him down the first time he asked her for a date.
“It took a long time before she said ‘yes’,” he recalled.
They dated for a year. Then he was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War. They exchanged letters while he was in the service and he proposed when he got home.
Residents of New Hyde Park, they’ve raised two children during their 55 years of marriage.
Edward offered a simple answer to the longevity of their relationship: “When there’s an argument, somebody has to give in. So whether I’m wrong or right, I give in.”
Great Neck arts and political activist Shirley Romaine said Stanley, her husband of 58 years, was the first fellow she’d met who didn’t complain about the four floors he had to climb to her apartment in Greenwich Village.
She had just returned from touring with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in a 1957 production of “The Great Sebastian.” Stanley had been working in a ski patrol in Europe. They met in April and married the following October.
“We met on a blind date. She got me,” Stanley said.
She said they’ve been fortunate to travel a lot. They’ve also had shared mutual interests socially and politically, including a longtime commitment to the peace movement.
Of their recommitment to one another last week, Shirley said, “This is a big thing.”
