“I didn’t want to meet anyone because I had businesses to run,” Nellie said.
“I thought I’d just cut grass, play golf and eat a lot of TV dinners,” Bill said.
But they had mutual friends, John and Juanita Mays, who wanted them to meet, even though both continually declined.
On Aug. 26, 2005, things changed in a big, albeit slow, way.
“It was the 50th anniversary of the day I met Virgil at Hyde’s” Restaurant on Ohio 4, Nellie said, and her daughters took her out to lunch there.
“I decided to go back to Hyde’s again in the evening,” Nellie said. “Thinking that John and Juanita might be there and may have invited Bill to go along. I decided to go a little early and be finished eating when they came in. That way, if I didn’t want to stay, I could make an excuse and leave.”
But when she met “the gentleman with white hair,” she spent an hour talking to him in a corner booth.
She found out later that Bill knew who she was. The two had sung together in the choir at First Baptist Church, though Nellie didn’t remember Bill.
Before their meeting at Hyde’s, Bill decided to drive by her home after John had told him where Nellie lived.
“I parked down the street and sat there a while trying to decide whether or not I wanted to meet her,” he said.
He prayed for a sign, some kind of motion on her lawn, even if it was just an animal running by.
“Just as I came to her driveway, the garage door opened and out ran a woman in a long, blue robe,” Bill said. “She grabbed the newspaper and quickly disappeared inside.”
It was a few month after the Hyde’s meeting that Bill got up the nerve to tell Nellie about the drive-by.
In the meantime, the two began going out to dinner regularly. Bill scored brownie points by coming over to her house and fixing a leaky toilet.
After three weeks, Nellie told her daughters that she was seeing someone.
“They were very close to their father so I didn’t know how they would feel,” Nellie said.
Their immediate reaction, however, was “Go for it, Mom. Dad’s not coming back,” she said.
“After three months of dating, I realized I was in love with Nellie, but she was proceeding very cautiously,” Bill said.
That Christmas, however, Nellie gave Bill a 10-stanza poem, “My Christmas Message to Bill,” that concluded with “What waits in our future I really don’t know/What happens will now be God’s part./But right now I know only one certain thing,/I love you with all my heart!”
At their wedding on June 16, 2007, First Baptist Church Pastor Dennis Metzger said, “I didn’t feel like you needed any premarital counseling. Together, you have already had 97 years of marriage between you.”
“It brought a big laugh from our guests,” Nellie said.
The couple placed a composite photo on a table in the church foyer for the event.
“It had a photo of each of us with our late spouses,” Nellie said. The inscription read, “In loving memory of Kathy and Virgil. You will always be in our hearts.”
“This picture now hangs on the wall of our breakfast area,” Nellie said.
Hyde’s Restaurant, however, has become their “second dining room,” Nellie said.
“We eat there quite often,” she said. “We enjoy the good food and talking to the waitresses and guests.”
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