Seashore Highlands Love Birds Tie the Knot
There isn’t just one thing Emily Ann Allen loves about her new husband, Wayne McDown, there’s a whole bunch of things about him she adores and that’s why she wanted to marry him in their golden years.
“Life is wonderful,” said Allen, noting she and her husband were on the mend from a recent bout of COVID. “He’s sweet. He’s kind. He’s loving. We were confined for a bit, but we were confined together, and we could sit on the couch and hold hands. Just be together.”
The widow, affectionately known as EA, 78, and widower, endearingly called Mr. Mac, 91, met at the Seashore Highlands in Gulfport. They were married at the facility on August 22 in front of dear friends, loving family members, and thrilled aged care staff.
“This was our first wedding,” said Diana White, area marketing and sales director for Methodist Senior Services, the umbrella facility for Seashore Highlands. It’s the only non-profit, faith-based senior living community offering independent and assisted living as well as Green House Home Memory Support on the Gulf Coast.
“We all just pitched in,” White said. “They both gave us ideas of what they wanted, and our team members all helped to make it a special day.”
The couple lived across the hall, or as it’s called at the facility, across the street, from one another, but despite being neighbors for more than a year, rarely spoke. “He was very shy, kind of stuck to himself,” EA said of her new husband. “He would go down to breakfast, lunch, and dinner and go back to his room to read or watch TV.”
Since both are avid bookworms, they also love reading the daily newspaper. When EA discovered Mr. Mac was a paper subscriber, she just couldn’t help herself. “I went right over there and knocked on his door,” she said, adding she asked what he did with the paper each day after he read it. Mr. Mac explained he dropped it off with White for others to enjoy. EA asked if she could read it after he was finished, and she would then take it to White.
“The next morning there was a knock on my door but before I could get to the door there was nobody there,” she said. “I looked down and he had put the paper on the railing outside my door.”
For the two weeks that followed, Mr. Mac left the paper on the doorstep for his future bride without saying a word. “I finally walked over and told him, ‘I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. I’d like to get to know you better, and thank you for letting me read the paper,’” EA said. Mr. Mac added he was surprised to find her behind the door and nervously thought to himself, “Just be polite. Be polite.”
She stayed for several hours, and the couple talked endlessly about their lives. They discovered they had lots in common, including their children living in nearby subdivisions in Denver, Colorado.
“When I went to leave, we both, at the same time, said ‘Can I have a kiss?’ and we’ve been together ever since,” she said. “Our children met and they’re all excited for us and happy with the fact that we have fallen in love and gotten married.”
Instead of the traditional wedding march, the couple walked down the aisle with loved ones escorting them to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love” and there was not a face without a smile or a dry eye in the entire place.
