Xs & Os: a 70 year romance and, finally, a wedding.

This is an incredibly romantic love story.

This is the kind of love story that kicks 'The Notebook's' ass.

This love story gives people hope that soul mates do exist.

This is the kind of lifelong romance that proves that when timing doesn't work out between sweethearts, sometimes the sweethearts just need to give it some time.

Beth Ashley and Rowland Fellows were childhood pals who spent summers in cottages in Maine and ran around a wharf and lived the authentic, romanticized life us newfangled modern kids tried to mimic in fancy summer camps in the Berkshires. They drifted apart, they married, they remarried, they bore children, they were widowed. And they found each other again 70 years later--both of them now in their 80s.

“Beth and I have been like two bookends, with almost 70 years of empty space between us,” Mr. Fellows said. “There’s a lot to catch up on, but we better do it quickly. We can always relax a little more toward the end.”

And this is why I love the NY Times Weddings section. Because out of every 25 or so stories about the MBA son of a Senator and a Mortgage Broker marrying the MBA daughter of a Professor of Political Science and a Lawyer, there is a story that is about love instead of graduate degrees. And this--this is truly inspiring.

[via the NY Times Weddings & Celebrations]
[Image Credit: NY Times]