After remaining divorced for 43 years, a 75-year-old Walmart employee was surprised when her ex-husband popped the question.
Renate Stumpf was in the Fort Smith, Arkansas, Walmart working when her ex-husband, Louis Demetriades, popped up behind her with a sign reading, “Happy Valentine’s Day! Will you marry me?”
Speaking of her ex-husband turned fiancé, Stumpf said: “Forty-three years is a long time, so I wasn’t sure at first, but I will marry him though because he’s changed for the better, I’ve come to realize.”
She called the day the best Valentine’s Day of her life, and admitted that the proposal “knocked her socks off.”
The couple met in Germany when they were 18, with Stumpf stating: “I was working in the kitchen at the army base, and he was a soldier. The first time I ever saw him, he asked me if I could fix him a hamburger. He liked who he saw, so he asked to go help me out in the kitchen.”
She kicked him out of the kitchen because she didn’t need help, but he kept showing up and they began dating.
They had three kids together, but life got hard when they moved back to the United States.
“We had little financial support, I didn’t know anything, and I could barely speak English. We started arguing about every little thing,” she said.
They divorced after 13 years together and went on to get remarried, but their second spouses have both passed away.
They reconnected after her “stubborn husband” tried to reach their daughter through Facebook. He then called the Walmart outlet to rekindle a friendship.
“When we saw each other again last December, we knew right then we still loved each other for sure. That love has never passed,” Stumpf said.
They are planning a civil wedding now and a church wedding later. They made the choice to enjoy each other’s company for a bit longer first.
“There’s no rush at my age. God put us together again, and it couldn’t be any other way after all these years,” she said.
Sources: ABC News
