Last week news that a couple, together for 72 years, married in Iowa took the country by storm. Now, the women, both in their nineties, talk about their lives together.
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On a Saturday earlier this month in Davenport, Iowa at the First Christian Church, Vivian Boyack and Alice “Nonie” Dubes, married. Both now in their early nineties, they had been together 72 years.Â
“We’ve always been married in our hearts,” they told the Des Moines Register when they described their decades together, sharing that it was love at first sight.
“I looked at her, and I saw how she was dressed… It was just one of those things they always talk about — people who fall in love with their wife or their husband — first things people notice. It happened with me I guess,” Nonie says. “I could tell you exactly what she had on. A gray dress with black velvet trim and big pearl buttons.”
“No one knew what was happening,” Nonie said. “We didn’t even know it was anything special. I was just drawn to her. That’s all.”
“The hand of God was there,” Vivian added. “Suddenly, we were in love.”
From that day forward, they felt like they were in hiding.
The two explain how scared they’ve been all their lives to let the world know they are a couple.Â
Through all this they kept quiet, although at times they wished they could live the life of “normal” couples.
“It used to be a mortal sin,” Vivian said of living together, “and that was a big bother to us.”
Five years after Iowa had a same-sex marriage law, they decided to marry.
Vivian planned the wedding — every last detail. Emotions came out as she shopped for a dress.
“I always wanted a wedding,” she said at the shop, admiring the dresses.
More than 30 people were in the First Christian pews that day, and the Rev. Linda Hunsaker presided.
It was no small decision. No gay couple had ever married in the church.
“It’s Vivian and Nonie,” Hunsaker said of the decision to marry them. “They had been in the church since 1947. They had been deacons and in the choir. We thought of them as a couple. Nobody asked them, but you can’t not know. In the church directory, they have their picture together.
“When you don’t know somebody, it’s easy to make statements about right and wrong. But when you know someone, have a relationship with them, which is what God wants, you want the best for them.”
“So many wonderful people in our lives were there, people that knew about us but loved us still,” Vivian said. “God brought us to this point. We don’t know why. It seems like this is an end really, which is a little scary.”