This is a story with a happy ending, and like most stories with such endings, it comes from nontraditional beginnings.
Elmus Honeycutt found his new bride, Gladys Sue Balch, on ChristianMingle.com last summer, and they married Thursday afternoon in a small ceremony in Rainbow City.
It would be your typical, run-of-the-mill, 21st-century court-ship story of boy meets girl through an Internet dating site — except in this case, boy and girl are both 86, and they were married in Elmus’ retirement community at Regency Pointe.
“I’ve never even heard of anyone 86 years old getting married,” Elmus said, laughing at the unusual circumstances surrounding his courtship and wedding. “But she’s in good health, and mine, as far as I know, is perfect.”
“It just goes to show you’re never too old to try new things,” said Michael Porter, Sue’s 13-year-old great-nephew from Huntsville, who was a guest at the wedding.
Although Elmus and Sue said they don’t have any friends their age who have used the Internet for much of anything — especially dating — they don’t find their story all that remarkable.
Sue’s husband and Elmus’ wife both died in the summer of 2008. Church friends encouraged Elmus to tap the resources on the Internet to find friendship and companionship. Sue’s late husband’s insurance company promoted dating Web sites to her through mailings.
“Well, I was on the hunt, and I guess he was, too,” Sue said. “I was lonesome.”
Elmus had tried one or two dating sites, but they connected him with a lot of women in other states. When he saw on Sue’s profile last summer that she was from Rainbow City, he sent her an e-mail.
“She e-mailed me back, and so we got acquainted,” he said.
It wasn’t a week before they had talked on the phone and set up their first date in the dining room at Regency Pointe. The courtship progressed, and Elmus said he wasn’t even considering remarriage when Sue proposed to him over the Thanksgiving holiday.
At first he turned her down, but two months later, he surprised her with a public announcement from the church pulpit where they were attending services together.
“She doesn’t mind telling people that she begged me to marry her,” Elmus said, laughing.
He grew solemn as he explained he was having a hard time getting over his first wife, and that was why he turned down Sue at first. But her persistence paid off. His face brightens when she walks into the room, and he can’t withhold a boyish laugh at her presence.
“I don’t think I would have married her if she hadn’t shown that love to me,” he said.
Sue is selling her Rainbow City home to move to Regency Pointe with her new husband. Elmus said he will be getting a larger apartment so they can have an office for Sue’s two computers and his one.
He confessed to having a file of about 25 women from across the country saved on one of his dating site profiles.
“I’m going to have to give them to Sue now,” he said, good-naturedly.
“I’ll let him destroy them,” she retorted, giggling.
