The story of a woman who reconnected with her long-lost love after 42 years apart was widely last year. The couple — Stephen Watts and Jeanne Watts (formerly Gustavson) — recently married!
“When he proposed, I said, ‘A thousand times yes!'” Jeanne, now 69, tells PEOPLE for the Valentine’s Day special in this week’s issue. “We’re trying to make up for 42 lost years.”
Jeanne and Stephen first met in 1971, when she was a freshman and he was a senior at Chicago’s Loyola University.
“He was my first love. He was my true love,” Jeanne said in last year’s Love issue.
However, Jeanne’s mother strongly opposed the relationship because she did not want her White daughter to date a Black man.
“She just went ballistic,” Jeanne said. “She didn’t want this relationship to happen at all.”
Despite this, the couple secretly dated for seven years. But after Jeanne finished nursing school and got a job that required a long commute and late shifts, she had trouble seeing Stephen, who didn’t own a car.
“Everything completely overwhelmed me,” Jeanne said. “The family issue was always weighing on me because it permanently shattered my relationship with my mother. She was always my mother, and I loved her unconditionally, but it harmed our relationship for the rest of my life.”
The couple discussed marriage, but Jeanne was hesitant to take the next step.
“I would’ve lost my entire family,” she said.
“I love you, but I just can’t do this,” Jeanne said over the phone one evening while standing at the nurse’s station during her shift.
Stephen was rendered speechless by the news. It was a jarring ending that would stay with Jeanne for years.
“I regretted it then, I regretted the way I did it, but I did it,” said Jeanne.
They would live separate lives for the next four decades, never speaking to each other.
Cut to 2021, when Jeanne is a divorced retiree whose mother has died. She started searching for Stephen from her home in Cedar Mill, Oregon, but couldn’t find him on social media.
“Everything came up a dead end when I tried to search for him,” she said. “There was virtually no trace of him.”
In April 2021, Jeanne found a mailing address for his niece and wrote her a letter.
“She told me he was in a nursing home,” Jeanne said, “and that’s something I had never in a million years imagined.”
She called the nursing home in May 2021 and asked for Stephen. A member of staff explained that patients did not have bedside phones. She wrote him a letter, but he never responded. She called again, only to be told by a nurse that he couldn’t talk on the phone.
In late June 2021, Jeanne traveled to Chicago to talk to him in person.
“I needed to know: Was he okay? Was he married? Would he forgive me?” she said.
When she walked into the room, Stephen recognized her instantly, said her name and started to cry.
“I knew he still loved me,” she said.
On Aug. 8, 2021, he moved into her Oregon home — and he’s been there ever since.
“She is wonderful. She is my heart and soul,” Stephen, now 73, told PEOPLE. “I want to live with her always.”
He proposed to her a few months later. On Oct. 15, 2022, the couple said “I do” in front of about 65 guests at their home. Tushi and Jeffie, their Norfolk terriers, served as ring bearers.
“We can spend the rest of our lives together making plans,” says the woman who now goes by Jeanne Watts. “I gladly took his last name. I’ve wanted it for a long time.”