Your Morning Cry: After 70 Years Together, Couple Dies 15 Hours Apart

Go ahead and grab a tissue, because this real-life version of the couple from The Notebook is almost certainly going to bring tears to your eyes: An Ohio couple who’d been married for seven decades recently died within a day of one another.

Helen and Kenneth Felumlee (92 and 91, respectively) met at 19 and 18 and married in 1944, according to the Zanesville Times Recorder. They eloped, but were so nervous it took several weeks to tell their parents. Over the years they had 8 children; Kenneth often worked two jobs. They traveled the country by bus after retiring in 1983. The couple were willing to go to great lengths to be together:

When Kenneth’s health started to fail, Helen began sleeping on the couch to be near him. The two hadn’t slept apart in 70 years, the family said. Years ago, when the two took an overnight ferry equipped with bunk-beds, they chose to both sleep on the bottom bunk rather than be separated for even a night.

Forget all the pretty words the poets have ever put to paper—that’s true love. The Times Recorder adds that, “Even in their last days, Helen and Kenneth would eat breakfast together while holding hands.”

“We knew when one went, the other was going to go,” their daughter told the local paper. “We wanted them to go together, and they did.”