The path to love isn’t always an easy one. Sometimes the storybook ending you dream of isn’t quite possible.
Or sometimes, it just gets delayed. But when two teenagers had to separate, one for the military and the other to finish school, they assumed their plan of life together had fallen apart for good.
But storybook endings wouldn’t be quite the fairytale they are, if there wasn’t some sort of dragon to slay. In this case, the dragon was time, and it took 63 years for it to be conquered.
For high school sweethearts, Caroline Reeves and Eddie Lamm, the dragon they had to slay reared its head in 1956. Lamm, who had just graduated, was getting ready to leave for the military. Reeves, who was just a bit younger, had to finish high school.
The couple, both from Tennessee, always knew there would be a time they had to be apart. But their last date ended with no fanfare. No letterman’s jacket, or class ring for Reeves to know Lamm would come back to her. There wasn’t even a goodbye. Lamm said he didn’t know how to say goodbye, so he didn’t.
Eddie Lamm and Caroline Reeves talk with CBS News. Photo from CBS
For Reeves, it was just heartbreak.
I opened that car door and I got out of that car and ran up the steps and slammed the door and went upstairs and cried all night,” Reeves told CBS. “That was it.”
The pair went their separate ways. Coincidentally, in 1961, they each ended up marrying someone else. Reeves became a writer for magazines and Lamm served 21 years in the U.S. Air Force.
Reeves’ husband died in 2001. Lamm’s wife, Polly, died from Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2021. They had been married nearly 60 years. Lamm had also been Polly’s caretaker during her illness.
“It just shows you his strength and how sweet and kind and gentle this man is and always has been,” Reeves said.
Last year, Lamm said something just hit him. He had to call her. So, all the way from California, he reached out. Nine times. Nine unanswered calls. Until she finally picked up.
It was like they had never spent a moment apart.
The reunited couple on their wedding day. Photo from CBS
“After the second day, it was comfortable. It was natural. By the third day, that third night, he told me he still loved me. And I knew my life had changed. And then the next morning, he calls and he says, ‘I apologize for being so forward last night,'” Reeves said.
Lamm, now 84, and Reeves, 81, were not letting this second chance at love pass them by. A few weeks later, Reeves had agreed to move back to California with him, and three months after they were married – with Lamm’s class ring as the wedding ring.
The dragon was slayed and the storybook romance finally finished and it only took them 63 years.
We feel young again,” Reeves said.
“When you’re in your 80s, you don’t have to grow old,” she said. “We keep our minds going and we’re active and we have fun and laugh and tease and cut up and just want to just live as long — the best life we can live.”
Reeves said it was a miracle that they had found each other. “And we asked God all the time, ‘why did you do this?’ And now we know: to take care of each other,” she said.
Watch as the couple reminisces about their time together, and apart, below.
