Woman Marries Her 'First Love' 4 Decades After Her Mother Made Her End Her Interracial Relationship

Feb 10, 2023 by apost team

There have been periods of time when some people didn’t have the freedom to choose the people who they would spend the rest of their lives with, mostly because of the standards set by society. For one, some people had to follow the decisions of their parents back then as they didn’t have a choice or they would be disowned by their own family. Others, on the other hand, had to suffer the opposition to interracial marriage. But some people simply won’t give up on love, just like a woman who had been separated from the love of her life for more than four decades but didn’t give up on him and married him in February 2023.  

Jeanne Gustavson-Watts and Stephen Watts first met in 1971. Jeanne was only a freshman, while Watts was a senior student at Chicago Loyola University. Both of them were German majors, with Stephen serving the German club at the time.  

“He was my first love, He was my true love,” Jeanne told PEOPLE in an interview back in February 2022.

“He was very striking,” Jeanne said. “Extremely handsome, dressed impeccably, always a gentleman — everything you’d want in a boyfriend.”

Sadly, Jeanne’s mom didn’t approve of their relationship because she was white while he was black.

“She just went ballistic,” Jeanne recalled. “She didn’t want this relationship to happen at all.”

Her mom was so determined to keep them apart she even talked to university officials to make sure they never got to talk to each other. But that didn’t stop them from pursuing their love for each other, and they dated for seven years.

Then again, it became a challenge for them to keep up with their relationship after Jeanne landed a job after she graduated from nursing school.

Admitting she constantly weighed in between her relationship with her mother and herself, Jeanne said she would never have had a happy ending if they had pushed through with their relationship and got married.

“I would’ve lost my entire family,” she said. “I knew that if I did marry him, I probably wouldn’t see my family again.”

The saddest part was that she ended their relationship over the phone and told him that while she loved him, “I just can’t do this.”

“I regretted it then, I regretted the way I did it, but I did it,” she said about her decision.

Jeanne, who was a divorced retiree and whose mom was no longer alive, decided to look for him in 2020. In April 2021, she found a mailing address for his niece and wrote a letter to him. To her surprise, she discovered that Stephen was in a nursing home.

While she tried to write him a letter, she didn’t get a response. So that’s when she decided to fly to Chicago. In June 2021, they finally reunited – and Stephen instantly recognized him, uttered her name, and started to cry.

Jeanne was heartbroken when she found out that she had suffered two strokes and that his left leg had been amputated due to infections. But they soon started catching up on each other’s lives. “I knew he still loved me,” Jeanne said.

Jeanne then asked Stephen to come live with her in Oregon and put everything behind them.

“When he proposed, I said, ‘A thousand times yes!’” Jeanne told PEOPLE in one of their Valentine’s Day specials for 2023. “We’re trying to make up for 42 lost years.”

Of course, Jeanne didn’t miss out on her chance and took on his last name. “I’ve wanted it for a long time,” she said.

apost.com

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