Thursday, June 19, 2008

Longest recorded marriages

When I posted the article from Minnesota yesterday about the 83-year long marriage between Clarence and Mayme Vail, I asked the question "What is the longest marriage in recorded history?"

Larry Lehmer, posting on his Passing It On blog, noted that Wikipedia had a list on their web site titled, strangely enough, "List of people with the longest marriages." [Hmmm - note to self: sometimes you can answer your own questions by doing a little homework without looking completely dumb].

The Wikipedia list shows that Philipose Thomas (100 years at the time) and Sosamma (99 years and six months at the time) of Kerala, India were married 17 February 1919 and their marriage had lasted 86 years, 4 months as of 2005. I wonder if they are both still alive? You would think that if one of them had died, it would have been reported in the newspaper and the Wikipedia entry would have been updated. If they are still alive today, then they have been married 89 years, 171 days.

The oldest recorded combined age of a married couple is 212 years and 364 days, for Leonardus Arnoldus Marie Koppert (30 January 1885 - 17 November 1990) and Marie Cornelie de Chauvigny de Blot (27 October 1890 - 8 January 1998) from Bilthoven (Utrecht) in the Netherlands.

Thanks to Larry for the kick in the keyboard and the link!

No comments: