They have written songs about looking for love in all the wrong places and hopeless ones. But now songwriters could have inspiration for a new number.
Marjorie Fiterman and Bernie Littman found love in their Philadelphia nursing home after their longtime spouses passed away. And, after dating for nine years, they became the world’s oldest newlywed couple, as Guinness World Records recently recounted on its website.
According to Guinness, whose organization curates a database of 40,000 records that is a constant source of fascination worldwide, Fiterman, 102, and Littman, 100, could have met decades earlier while both attended the University of Pennsylvania.
But she pursued teaching and he undertook an engineering career, so their paths never crossed. Each spent more than 60 years married to their first respective spouses before they became widowed and moved a few doors down from each other in the same senior living facility in the so-called city of Brotherly Love.
A costume party on their floor gave Fiterman and Littman the chance to meet, and their romance ignited soon thereafter.
The pair had their first date on the same day one of Littman’s great-granddaughters was born, Guinness noted. They bonded over shared meals and by participating in theater productions staged by their facility.
Guinness reported that Fiterman and Littman helped each other in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected elderly people and their communities.
Littman’s granddaughter, Sarah Sicherman, told the Jewish Chronicle that he and Fiterman were “so lucky to have found each other and be a support to each other”.
So much so that the two decided to take their relationship to the next level and get married at a ceremony in their retirement community in May, defying assumptions about how they might choose to remain unwed because of their age.
“They both love each other’s humour and intellect,” Sicherman said to Guinness. “They keep each other young.”
The couple was ultimately entered for consideration of Guinness World Records’ mark for oldest couple to marry (aggregate age). They secured the title with a joint age of 202 years and 271 days.
Littman later attributed his longevity and ability to allow in happiness to reading and keeping himself current, the records organization said. For her part, Fiterman credited buttermilk.
The couple’s officiant, rabbi Adam Wohlberg, avoided offering them the usual advice he provides to newlyweds at their ceremony, he previously told Fox News.
Instead, he said: “It is safe to say each of you, what you know and understand about each other, is exactly what the future holds for you and your partner.
“And what you have determined you love about each other – well, those things are not about to change.”
