by Rachel Ogbu

Could 97 years old Ada Laurie Bryant be the oldest cougar in the world? She married Robert Mitchell Haire, 86 on Saturday January 25 in Hockessin, Del.

There are different reasons people marry these days. Robert L. Bryant, a Universal Life minister and a son of the bride, officiated at his home but the bride wkeeping her name.

Bryant who had lived in the Country House, a retirement community in Wilmington, Del since 2001 with her first husband, Leonard met Haire and his first wife, Jean in 2007.

Bryant’s husband died some months after they moved in while in January 2010, Leonard’s wife was given a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and died 15 months later.

According to reports, their friendship began in August 2011 when Haire asked Bryant, an artist whose murals adorn some of the walls of Country House, to paint a portrait of his late wife, and Bryant agreed. Haire was “blown away” by the finished work and asked Bryant to help him choose the perfect frame at a local shop. Afterward, they had lunch at a tearoom, and both were surprised to discover that they had a lot to say to each other.

“There was some kind of feeling,” Haire recalled.

They began going on regular lunch dates and became very close, revealing to each other that both hated going to dinner alone at Country House. Even though they knew it meant they might be labeled a “couple” by the other residents (a “couple” being a widow and a widower who do things together), they started going together.

NY Times reports:

On Jan. 25, 2012, Mr. Haire, a hobbyist poet, slipped a sonnet vowing “friendship and affection” beneath Mrs. Bryant’s apartment door with a note that said “this represents how I feel in our relationship as a couple.” He was afraid to give it to her in person.

“I was desperately trying to strike a balance between too timid or bold. I didn’t want to mess things up,” he said about the courtship. “I can attest that it doesn’t get easier even in advanced age.”

He needn’t have worried. The next morning, he found a note outside his apartment door. Mrs. Bryant was delighted with the sonnet, and “she would heartily enter into that relationship.”

Jane Bryant Quinn, one of Mrs. Bryant’s daughters and the author, columnist and financial adviser, recalled speaking with her mother on the phone around this time.

“Her voice was kind of glowing,” she said. “She loved having someone to talk to again. Since my father died, she just didn’t have someone to talk to in the deepest sense.”

On Valentine’s Day, Mr. Haire presented Mrs. Bryant with a loose sapphire that he said he wanted to have mounted as an engagement ring. Mrs. Bryant refused the proposal, but a few days later said she would accept the stone as a friendship ring.

“I said, ‘I’d very much like you to accept it in whatever way you’d like,’ ” Mr. Haire said.

Their feelings continued to grow. Mr. Haire presented her with another sonnet in late March, and by April they had professed their love to each other.

The subject of marriage came up occasionally, but Mr. Haire never pressed the issue.

“I told her repeatedly that whatever care she needed, I’d already committed to,” Mr. Haire said. “She could rely on me no matter whether we married or not.”

Mrs. Bryant finally accepted his proposal on Aug. 6, and they will move into her apartment (“It’s slightly bigger,” he said) after the wedding.

She explained why she first turned him down. “There’s a great difference in our ages, as you can see,” she said. “I didn’t think it was the thing to do because I don’t have that many years ahead of me, but he said, ‘That’s all the more reason.’ I like him very much. I love him. So we’re going to be married.”