A man who married an 81-year-old woman when he was 35 has explained that it was love at first sight, despite there being a 46-year age gap.

Iris Jones, from Weston-super-Mare in the UK, met Mohamed on a Facebook group and they tied the knot in Egypt in 2020, though this was much to the disapproval of Iris' family.

As per the Daily Mail, the now 83-year-old's family gave her the silent treatment after the pair got married, maybe because the reception was in a KFC.

The couple called for the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson to allow Mohamed to settle in the UK as he would be an "asset" to the country.

Iris and her husband appeared on the British talk show This Morning where they told hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby about their relationship.

"He is wonderful, but the fact that their father is younger than their sons is maybe a point of contention. But it makes no difference. I'm older than his mother and father, my mother-in-law and father-in-law are younger than me, it makes no difference, we love each other and that's all that matters" Iris said.

The topic then moved onto how the ceremony went, which they confessed was not a traditional wedding.

"It was an exchange of documents. We had to sign several documents for the signature," Iris said. "After that, the document was handed to us, one for Mohamed and one for me, all in Arabic, I don't know what it says at all. It might say that i'm completely under his thumb, but if that's the case, I'm not."

Mohamed said: "My [feeling] is very good, we have in the past difficulties. Egyptian men are good men who take care of their wives."

Speaking to the Daily Mail, he further explained how he fell in love with Iris: "I was very nervous but the moment I laid eyes on her I knew that it was true love. I’m a very lucky man to have found a woman like this.

"I don’t care where we live or how rich or poor she is, I just want to be with Iris," Mohamed continued. "At the end of the day, which country she wants to make her home is her choice; it can be either Britain or Egypt.

"People think I am with her for all the wrong reasons. I know Britain is a beautiful country and a lot of people want to go there but I’m not bothered. I'm prepared to live with her anywhere in the world."

He went on to reveal that his mother is happy with his bride and getting his mother's seal of approval is all that really matters to him.

Mohamed further explained: "It might seem a bit strange having a wife who is 20 years older than your mother but that’s love. It makes you blind. When you are a man and you fall in love with a woman, it doesn’t matter how old she is or what she looks like."

Featured image credit: Roman Lacheev / Alamy

An elderly couple has tied the knot after falling madly in love with one another when they met online during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Per Oprah Daily, Jim Adams, 78, and Audrey Coutts, 79, matched on the dating site Silver Singles late last year, months after coronavirus began spreading throughout the world.

"I came across Audrey on my first go-through on the site," Adams recalled to the outlet. "It only took a day to find her. After that, I didn't need it anymore. I said, 'Well, I have to meet this person who's as crazy as I am.' "

Silver Singles has a compatibility meter that calculates how well matched a particular couple is based on their shared interests. From their individual answers, the love calculator deemed their compatibility to be at 94 percent.

Coutts, whose previous marriage ended 33 years ago, told Oprah Daily that she had been using this particular dating site for years but had never been lucky enough to match with someone she saw any potential with - until she stumbled across Adams' profile.

"We just fit. We clicked," Coutts said. "We still don't know why it wasn't 100."

It was just three months after they first met that Adams, whose wife passed away in 2017, asked Coutts to move in with him. He then asked her to become his wife earlier this year in May.

"It seemed like I'd been living with her for years," Adams said. "I'd be sitting here thinking about something, then she would say it. I would start to say something, and she'd say the same thing almost at the same time."

"We were connected," he added. "So what were we waiting for? The only reason it took me so long to propose was I had to find the ring, and that took two months."

"We live on a quiet street, and we have a quiet life," the doting husband added of their life together. "We can spend days on end doing very little and when it's raining, we don't even need to go out. I paint, I'll rub Audrey's feet, and go back and paint some more."

Featured image credit: Neil Bussey / Alamy

An American couple who shared the longest Down Syndrome marriage ever have been parted from one another following the news that the husband had died.

After a long and difficult battle with Alzheimer's disease, 56-year-old Paul Scharoun-DeForge passed away, leaving his wife, 59-year-old Kris, by herself. Relatives of the couple believe that the marriage was the longest between two people living with Down's Syndrome.

Marrying all the way back in 1993, Paul and Kris (from Liverpool in the state of New York) met at a dance for disabled people in the 80s. "I looked into Paul’s eyes and saw my future," Kris explained to Today.

In 1988, Paul proposed to the love of his life. "He made me laugh," explained Kris to the Washington Post. "I looked into his eyes and saw my future, and that's when I proposed to him… He said yes."

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After five years of engagement, Kris and Paul got married in 1993, and Susan Scharoun, Kris’ sister, says the couple had earned the right to choose their own future.

"They have an unconditional love. They totally complement each other," Scharoun said, adding that, although they had their differences, they did their best to support one another.

"She is more emotionally vulnerable and he has always been her rock," she said. "She would plan what they would do and really be responsible for the social events. They had a lot of struggles. I saw them as individuals who should have a right to make that decision."

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Marriage is a universal part of the human experience, and people have a universal desire to spend it with someone they love, said Erin Sobkowski, a lawyer and officer with 21 Connect, a community group educating people about Down's Syndrome.

Hearing that her husband had passed was, of course, a hard thing for Kris to process.

"We had to tell her he wasn’t going to come back and it became really difficult for her," Scharoun said, adding that Paul had begun not to recognise people when his Alzheimer's began to worsen.

"When he would see Kris, he would just look at her, and you knew there was that recognition," Scharoun added.

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Paul had been in intensive care to help him with his condition, but in March, he was returned to inpatient care with a bout of pneumonia. Kris sat next to him, holding his hand and staying with her husband the whole time. Later, he placed his head on his brother's shoulder, and died peacefully.

"I was very, very upset," Kris said of her husband's passing, adding that she'd given him a picture of a butterfly that hung beside his bed. "I gave it to my sweetheart, and he loved it. I think of Paul flying up in the air … and being free."

On August 13, the date of their wedding anniversary, Kris plans to go to a special place to scatter Paul's ashes.

A 72-year-old grandmother has claimed to found love with a 19-year-old that she met at her son's funeral.

Almeda and Gary Hardwick wed back in 2016 - two weeks after they first met. The pair became acquainted at the funeral of Almeda's son, Robert, who died aged 45 after suffering a seizure.

Almeda was married for 43 years before her first husband passed away. She has maintained, however, that her new partner is her "soulmate", describing her relationship as a "whirlwind".

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"I was married for 43 years and there wasn’t a lot of kissy, huggy stuff going on…no romance," Almeda stated her YouTube show, Girl's Talk. "[Our relationship] is a whirlwind. We are always complimenting and kissing. We’re enjoying our relationship. When you meet that perfect one, that’s when you know you don’t want to lose that feeling."

"The compliments, the hugs the kisses… that’s very romantic. The couple revealed the first time they had sex was on their wedding night, and described each other as 'wonderful lovers'."

Almeda also offered relationship advice to her viewers. "In our relationship, we do little things each day to help each other out. Whether he cooks me supper, or mops for me, we always thank each other," she continued.

"It’s the little things like that, cooking a meal, washing dishes. Always compliment him and show love. Show it every day, we aren’t promised tomorrow."

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Gary opened up about his unconventional relationship to the New York Post. "It was wonderful, beyond my wildest dreams. She really is my dream woman and the physical side of our relationship couldn’t be better."

Prior to meeting Almeda, Gary was with a 77-year-old woman, but they were far from happy. "We were always fighting. I fell into depression and was looking for a way out," he explained.

Luckily, Gary's aunt, Lisa, proceeded to invite him to Robert's cremation, where he met his now "soulmate".

"I’d noticed this young man with a lovely smile during the service and thought, 'Wow, this is the one,'" Almeda said of their meeting. "He was on the other side of the church, but I kept looking over at him. It was like a bright light through the grief. Then, as I was walking to the door at the end, he came over and passed on his condolences. We didn’t have much time, but it was enough."

"It was an instant thing for me too. She had the most gorgeous, sparkling blue eyes," Gary corroborated.

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Their first date was at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, where Almeda addressed her anxieties about their age gap. "I just came out with it and said to him, ‘Look, I’m 71 and you’re 17. Am I too old for you?’ He squeezed my hand, grinned and replied: 'Age is just a number'," she revealed

"Almeda is so young at heart that age never bothers us, we never really think about it. I just know that God answered my prayers that day she walked into my life," Gary added to the New York Post.

Finding love can be difficult at the best of times - especially finding a significant other that you know will live happily with for the rest of your life.

One woman has found her perfect life partner - and decided to marry herself.

Dorothy Fideli, 77, who goes by 'Dottie', accomplished her dream of 'happy ever after' as she married herself in a wedding ceremony held at her senior living home in Ohio on May 13.

Dottie looked radiant in a white dress and veil as she carried a bouquet of white and red roses before walking down the aisle by herself.

Revealing why she made the unusual decision to marry herself, Dottie told WLWT: "This is something I’ve always wanted.

"I wanted to get married and have a happy life but things didn’t work out that way and now I have a second chance in doing something that’ll make me happy."

Dottie, who is a mother of three, was previously married in a quick courthouse ceremony in 1965, after which she went home and her husband went to work. The couple ended up divorcing nine years later.

The bride revealed: "I wore a black dress, so I was doomed before I got started."

Dottie got the idea to marry herself after seeing a woman do the same on a talk show and believed the ceremony would bring some joy to the other residents at the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Home in Goshen, Ohio.

She joked: "I do some crazy things around here just to make people laugh. When I see them all down in the dumps, I go get one of my outfits on and dress up and come down, and they smile."

Dottie planned her big day herself, including all the decorations and catering and got the retirement home property manager Rob Geiger to be her officiant.

"I came in here and I told Rob, I said, 'Rob, you’re going to marry me,'" Dotty told Today. "He said, 'You’re what?'"

He was supportive of being part of Dottie's big day after she explained her plan to him, and Dottie's daughter Donna Pennington also helped her pull off the perfect wedding by buying her wedding dress, getting flowers, and cooking for the attendees.

On the day, the home's community room was decorated with a balloon arch and guests were treated to a two-tiered white wedding cake, as well as heart-shaped cookies and sandwiches in the shape of wedding bells.

Despite knowing her significant other pretty well, Dottie admitted she had wedding day jitters, adding: "I was nervous, but then I was really happy."

Revealing why she decided to go down the aisle solo in her 70s, Dottie explained to WLWT: "Love is the most important thing in this world, and if you love God and love yourself, this world will be a field of roses."

Dottie's journey to self-love has also involved investing time in herself, as she daughter herself to read at the age of 75 and is spending time with her family as she awaits her first great-grandchild.

She told her daughter: "This is the best thing that I’ve ever had, outside of having you kids. This is what I’ve always wanted and I’m so happy that you [gave] it to me."

Featured image credit: Andrew Mayes / Alamy