After 42 years of waiting, Jeanne and Steven Watts are finally married. The couple first met at Loyola University in Chicago in 1971 and fell in love with each other. But their love story was not an easy one. Jeanne’s family objected to her marriage to a black man. Eventually, the lovers were forced to break up, and Jeanne broke up with Stephen.
For the next four decades, they did not communicate and each lived his own life. In 2021, the situation began to change. Jeanne, now a retired nurse, decided to track Stephen down again. Searches on social networks yielded nothing, but she managed to contact her former lover’s niece.
She explained that he was in a nursing home. In June 2021, Jeanne decided to come to Chicago from Oregon to visit him. I needed to know if he was okay? Was he married? Would he forgive me?”
As soon as she entered his room, he immediately recognized her, said her name aloud, and began to cry. “I knew he still loved me,” she said. In August of that year, Stephen moved in with her, and they have been together ever since.
On Oct. 15, 2022, in front of about 65 guests, they said “I do.” Jeanne said: “We could spend the rest of our lives making plans together. I was very happy to take his last name. It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time.”