A couple from Texas, finally tied the knot after being together for 41 years.
Bill and Linda Bownds met 1975, when he was 31, and she was 30.
They have been together ever since and they are very much in love. Now, after spending 41 years together, Bill finally got down on one knee and asked Linda to marry him.
Bill’s 96-year-old mother, who attended their wedding, said that she knew from the beginning that the two were for each other.
However, she said that she could not get her son to get himself together to ask Linda to marry him.
Bill said that friends and family were shocked when he and Linda made the announcement that they were finally getting married.
When Bill was asked why he didn’t propose sooner, he said: “I don’t have a good answer.”
The proposal came after both Linda and Bill have recently retired and they began spending more time together.
On the 41st anniversary of their first date, Bill, now 73, got down on one knee, and popped the question.
Linda recalled: “I said of course. When do you want to do it? Bill said next week. I said Monday because I wanted it ASAP.”
On Sunday, the couple who has been together for more than four decades celebrated their first Christmas as husband and wife.
Despite decades of dating, the couple never lived under the same roof until they wed. Bill moved into Linda’s Woodlands, Texas, home after the late November wedding.
Their families, who were told post-wedding, were shocked. They threw the Bownds a celebration this past weekend with about 50 family members in attendance.
“I was ecstatic when I heard the news,” Linda’s daughter Tracy Moore Winters told ABC News. “I’ve always thought of Bill as being my dad as he’s raised me as his daughter and now it’s official. I’m so happy for both of them and very excited for this Christmas, as we will finally be a family.”
Charla Moore Sisk, Linda’s other daughter, said she is equally as thrilled. “My life timeline is marked with ‘before Bill’ and ‘after Bill’ because Bill has always made sure we were taken care of, never hungry and was always there to help if we were sick and in the hospital. He was our dad long before they married officially.”
