A couple who was married for nearly 62 years passed away holding hands.

Tom and Delma Ledbetter from Lake Jackson, Texas, died within 90 minutes of each other, reported Click2Houston. The couple’s daughter Donetta Nichols said that the couple met in their early 20s through mutual friends. 

Tom Ledbetter was stationed in Florida when Delma and a girlfriend moved there. Donetta said their first date happened when Tom had to “just move his car.”
“They drove around two, three different blocks or something and he came back and parked and he said he reached over and he held her hand and he said, ‘I don’t know what made me do it.’ He said, ‘But I just reached over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.’”

They married within weeks. The couple had two daughters, then grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They had a life filled with laughter and love, their daughter said.

Delma became ill in April of this year. “They couldn’t get a pulse,” Donetta said. “They couldn’t get a blood pressure, they couldn’t get anything, yet Mama was just hanging on for something.”

Within days, Tom also became ill. “So we got him over to the nursing home with Mama and they had pushed their little beds together,” said Donetta. “Mama was laying right there kind of facing him. She was asleep, you know. And Daddy got over there and he reached over there and he just grabbed hold of her hand and he just laid there with her. It was so sweet.”

Tom passed away first with Delma following not even 90 minutes later. Their love story ended the same way it began — by holding hands.

“I mean, it was exactly how they wanted to go,” said Donetta. “It couldn’t have been any better.”