BP MARKOWITZ, WIFE JAMIE TO HONOR HUNDREDS OF BROOKLYN COUPLES MARRIED FOR A HALF-CENTURY OR MORE
From the Great Depression to World War II to Barack Obama, these long-time lovebirds remain together and embrace a changing world
On Friday, February 13, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and his wife, Jamie Snow-Markowitz, will fete hundreds of Brooklyn sweethearts for whom "love and marriage" has gone together like a "horse and carriage" for 50 years or more. The celebration at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge will also feature the couples renewing their wedding vows.
Among the sweethearts scheduled to attend are a Starrett City/Spring Creek Towers couple, married for a remarkable 71 years. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone of Cuban descent, and her family is Jamaican. As they both approach the age of 100, they say the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president was an intensely emotional experience for them.
Also celebrating will be Holocaust survivors who met in a displaced person's camp during World War II and discovered they grew up in the same small town outside Krakow, Poland. She is 88, he is a spry 101, and he boasts that he doesn't take a single medication. The couple has been celebrating wedded bliss for an amazing 61 years.
Married 64 years, a Dyker Heights couple met as teenagers in Downtown Brooklyn and continued to date even while he was off serving in World War II. In fact, she kept in touch with him by sending letters written on a long spool of adding machine tape. In 1945, he came home on a two-week furlough, and the soldier and his bride decided to get married. They still live in the home where they raised their children.
Two other Brooklyn couples share more than their secrets to a happy marriage--the two wives are also sisters! One pair met when they were only 17 years old, and she recalls watching a movie at the old Mayfair Theater on Coney Island Avenue when her future husband, sitting in the row behind her, "kept punching my head." Well, those "love taps" worked--they've been husband and wife for 56 years. Her sister's marriage is keeping pace at 54 years.
Borough President Markowitz will toast all of the Brooklyn sweethearts with champagne, join them for a whirl around the dance floor accompanied by the love ballads of their youth, and cap off the festivities with wedding cake and sugar-free treats. This year's gathering is the seventh hosted by BP Markowitz, who happens to celebrate his birthday on Valentine's Day and was smitten right here in Brooklyn when he met Jamie in the summer of 1999 on the beach at Kingsborough College. They were married at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that November.
