ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF
The Gittens, now 108 and 107, exchanged vows on June 4 1942 during a three-day army leave amid World War II.
Eleanor Gittens, 107, and her 108-year-old husband, Lyle, spent the spring in a modest Miami apartment where a framed Guinness World Records certificate marked their 83 years of marriage as the longest ever registered. With a combined age of 216 years and 132 days, they also ranked as the oldest married couple on record, a status confirmed this month by the human-longevity group LongeviQuest, which works with Guinness World Records. The designation passed to the Gittenses after the death of Manoel Angelim Dino last October.
The couple left Brooklyn during the COVID-19 pandemic after their daughter Angela asked them to move closer to her. “If you don’t live in New York, you’re camping,” joked Lyle, according to Helsingin Sanomat, though he admitted that sun-washed lunches with Eleanor—now shared over a can of Mexican Modelo rather than the martinis they poured for each other in the 1950s—softened the relocation.
A former basketball star at Clark Atlanta University, Lyle had long enjoyed recognition; the school inducted him into its Men’s Basketball Hall of Fame years ago. He still liked to remember the segregated train ride from Georgia to Florida that took him to his wedding. “I am happy; we have done a lot together and we still enjoy being together,” said the centenarian.
Their marriage began on 4 June 1942 in Bradenton, Florida. Granted a three-day leave from Army training, Lyle married Eleanor, then 21 and expecting their first child. “He had to go back to the barracks right after the wedding, but, as you see, that love still exists. At that time, I wondered if I would ever see him again,” Eleanor recalled. A few weeks later he shipped out with the all-Black 92nd Infantry Division to the Italian front.
While Lyle fought in Europe, Eleanor moved to New York to live with his family. She passed the civil-service examination, worked in accounting and in a factory that produced airplane parts for the war effort, and later taught in public schools. The couple communicated only through heavily censored letters—“most of Lyle’s words were crossed out,” he complained—until the soldier returned home to meet their firstborn son, Lyle Jr.
Peace brought two daughters, Angela and Ignae, and careers in public administration. Each evening they honored a ritual begun in the 1950s: one drink together after work. In retirement Eleanor pursued a new challenge, earning a doctorate in urban education from Fordham University at age 69. The pair traveled often, visited her ancestral Guadeloupe, and served faithfully in the Clark Atlanta University Alumni Association until the pandemic drew them south.
Reporters repeatedly asked for the key to their longevity. “We love each other,” said Eleanor to LongeviQuest investigators, according to Sábado. “I love my wife. That’s it,” Lyle added in the same interview. “We enjoy the time spent together and we have done many things together,” he repeated.
Today the Gittenses live under the watchful eye of Angela and granddaughter Johnyta. Lyle relishes recounting censored letters and the city he still misses, while Eleanor rereads her dissertation and tweaks minor grammatical slips. At lunch they raise a shared beer or glass of red wine, convinced that, as they put it, authentic love can outlast time.
