Man, Wife Die Hours Apart After 72-Year Marriage

A Georgia couple died mere hours apart last month, ending a 72-year relationship that may embody values "of an era long gone by," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Louise Bain, 90, drew her last breath on a hospital bed beside her husband, 92-year-old Robert Bain, on the day after Christmas; he passed away six hours later. "The moment Mom passed, daddy grasped his chest," says their daughter, Charlotte Tallent. "He knew she was gone." People say they were inseparable, holding hands in an assisted-living facility and snuggling while facing each other in her room. "This couple made history to me," says a worker at the Alpharetta, Ga., home "When you experience it yourself it’s remarkable how deep their love was."

They met in the 1940s when he brought another woman to a Texas church camp meeting: Glimpsing Louise, "he took the other lady home, came back and got my mother," says Tallent. Marrying in 1942, they worked together on a Mississippi Army base during World War II (he a plane mechanic, she a civilian truck driver) then lived together in Rome, Ga., for 31 years. Their traditional relationship was apparently built on each putting the other's needs before their own. "They knew who they were and enjoyed who they were," says Tallent. They leave behind a big family, including six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Oddly enough, a California couple married 62 years died within four hours of each other in August, ABC News reports. "I knew in my heart this is what's supposed to happen," says their granddaughter. (More marriage stories.)