D.W. and Willie Williams, who are 103 and 100 years old respectively, have not only recently celebrated their birthdays, but they also celebrated their wedding anniversary, which were only a week apart! After 82 years of being happily married, the pair is still going strong!
Their daughter, Alice Erin, and granddaughter, BJ Williams-Greene, hosted a party at a First Mayfield Memorial Baptist Church, where they have been members for 19 years. They celebrated the Williams’ long lives and marriage and sang hymns with their friends and family.
The couple, who met in Newberry, South Carolina in 1935 and married in 1937, have one child and one grandchild.
“My grandparents’ marriage is an inspiration. They communicate and make decisions together, they strive and achieve together and everyone loves them because they are genuine. They just inspire everyone to be the best they can be,” Williams-Greene told Good Morning America. “They have had such a long, successful marriage because they put God first and are each other’s best friends.”
The couple, who won the state’s contest for the longest married couple in 2014, said they enjoyed watching country westerns and playing crossword puzzles together. They also believe that communication is very important to any marriage, especially theirs.
“We don’t argue or have any fights. If we have a misunderstanding, we just talk it over,” they said. “The secret to a long marriage is just to be nice to each other.”
The couple enjoys spending time together and the simple things in life.
“We like to watch country westerns like ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Bonanza,’ and play crossword puzzles together,” they said.
The couple has lived through wars, the Depression and the civil rights era. The couple dealt with Jim Crow and segregation laws during the 1950s and 1960s, and said that was a particularly hard time.
“Although we lived during the Jim Crow era, we were still able to work and do things in the community. We were not impacted much by it because there were a lot of people willing to assist, who didn’t let the color of our skin…
…stand in the way,” the couple said.
Willie is a retired day care nursery worker and D.W. is a retired maintenance worker with Armour meatpacking.
When asked what they would do if they would be given another 100 years, D.W. replied, “I don’t know.”
“Sit around the house,” Willie added, making her husband laugh.