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High school sweethearts marry 63 years later
The two first met in 1950 at a ball game and dated for a year before drifting apart.
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Marcella, 79, went on to marry for 39 years and have three daughters; Vick, 80, married another woman with whom he had two daughters and two sons.
Both of their spouses passed away, and after reconnecting a few years back at an area reunion, the Vicks went on an official date this past June.
“We spent the day together, and we’ve gone from there and picked up where we left off when we were teenagers,” Marcella told ABC News. "I think at the very beginning we realized when we saw each other that we cared very much for each other. At our age now we were kind of hesitant at first but we realized a few weeks in that we were in love and wanted to get married."
And so they did this past Saturday in front of family and friends who all created pages for a big family scrapbook.
“It was wonderful! We didn’t really know his family, but we asked everybody to do a scrapbook page and have pictures of themselves and their family and some information about each other,” Sheila McCall, Marcella’s daughter, told ABC News. “We stored that all around the reception hall so everybody could see something about the others.”
It was a total family affair, with McCall’s son performing the ceremony and her granddaughter singing Rod Stewart's, “Have I Told You Lately.” Both Johnny and Marcella’s high school friends were in attendance.
McCall remembers hearing about Johnny her entire life.
“Mom had a wooden box that she had from the days when she was a teenager, and his name was in that box. She wrote in it in pencil. I’ve seen his name and heard about him my whole life,” she said. “This has all been a whirlwind! They’re acting like teenagers and so in love. Obviously they had a great connection even back then, and all they did was renew it.”
The nuptials were also a long time coming for Johnny, who told ABC News that though he and Marcella never tried to get in touch over the years, he “always thought she was kind of special.”
Marcella credits a shared background to their special bond.
“I think we value the same things in life. We both go to church, and he’s got a family he’s very close to and I have a family I’m very close to, and those are the things I value in him more than anything,” she said.
Johnny and Marcella are currently on honeymoon in Branson, Missouri, and plan to split their time between their two houses in Arkansas when they return.