A Walmart employee in Fort Smith, Arkansas, recently had the surprise of a lifetime. She hasn’t seen her ex-husband and first love for over 43 years, but he popped up in the store on Valentine’s Day with a heartwarming sign.
He even surprised her with a wedding proposal!
The two, now both 75 years old, first met each other at an army base in Germany in 1959. Renate Stumpf from Germany and Louis Demetraides locked eyes, made some jokes about each other and love was definitely in the air for the then 18-year-olds.
“I was working in the kitchen at the army base, and he was a soldier,” the woman recalls. “The first time I ever saw him, he asked me if I could fix him a hamburger. He liked who he saw, so he asked to go help me out in the kitchen.”
At first, Renate was a bit reluctant to get along with Louis, but the young man kept catching her attention and it didn’t take long before the two lovebirds started a relationship. They raised three children together.
The two were together for almost thirteen years but then divorced afterward.
A poor financial situation and language barriers were a couple of factors that resulted in the break.
“We had little financial support, I didn’t know anything and I could barely speak English,” Renate said to ABC News. “We started arguing about every little thing.”
Renate and Louis, both remaining in the United States, remarried with a second spouse after they split up. Their second spouses recently passed away, and Louis realized that he never stopped loving Renate.
Louis got in touch with one of their daughters and realized that his life was incomplete without Renate.
“When we saw each other again last December, we knew right then we still loved each other for sure,” the man told. “That love has never passed.”
The daughter was more than happy to oblige, and the man has been planning this Walmart surprise and proposal for over two months.
The day came when Renate and Louis would finally reunite after a whopping 43 years. It’s not clear if the two had any contact with each other via the telephone before that, but it’s a very heartwarming reunion nonetheless.
“Hey, good-looking,” Louis says to her. The man held up a large sign in the middle of the Walmart store that read:” Happy Valentine’s Day! Will you marry me?”
Renate was completely overcome with emotion and certainly didn’t expect to see Louis after all these years.
The two give each other a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. When Louis asked her again if she’d marry him, she teasingly declined. However, she quickly reassured him that she would eventually marry him, just not today.
“Forty-three years is a long time, so I wasn’t sure at first,” Renate said, “but I will marry him though because he’s changed for the better, I’ve come to realize.”
“And why did I come to Walmart to propose to my wife again? It’s because she has so many friends here and I knew she would like to share that with them,” Louis added.
The woman also told local reporters that this was by far the best Valentine’s Day of her life. Both are extremely happy to be in each other’s lives again, and this rekindling of a first love is just absolutely heartwarming to see.
“There’s no rush at my age. God put us together again, and it couldn’t be any other way after all these years,” Renate concluded.
What a special proposal story!
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