Oh, and youngest age at marriage: my dad’s younger sister was 13 when she got married. She’d just finished 8th grade. She and her husband were married more than 40 years until he passed away. He was 5 or 6 years older than her.
Not “married,” since we’re not allowed in this state . . . but I’m exactly 20 years older than my partner (same birthday).
And my grandmother married her 3rd husband in her late 70s.
What’s the story behind that? Was it his first marriage? Was he rich? Why would a 28 year old woman marry someone who is more than likely going to expire before 40, outside 45 years of age (and a 45 year old with a brittle old man whose viagra doesn’t cut it anyore.)
Is he rich? She isn’t related to Anna Nicole Smith is she?
A friend of the family got married when he and his wife were sixteen. No pregnancy, they just wanted to get married. Still together forty-some years later.
My great-aunt got married for the first time when she was in her fifties.
My sister-in-law is about fifteen years older than my brother. They have been married for thirty-nine years. I am about four years younger than the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan. Apparently it runs in the family - my mom is about a month older than my dad.
Regards,
Shodan
Youngest 17, oldest 85? 86? (they met and married in an assisted living facility). Biggest age difference: several couples with a gap of 30-some years, including my grandfather and his third wife (yes, he was/is rich) and a family friend and her second husband (who is not rich, but was very handsome at 67 and an awesome person).
I’m not married, but might as well be IMO. My boyfriend is 17 years older than me and we got together when I was 19 (he’s not rich). Sometimes people think this is shocking or weird, usually they take it in stride.
Humm - I don’t think there’s much of a story, really. They met at work, I think - he was the provincial psychiatrist and she was a psychiatric nurse. I suppose he was comfortable but I wouldn’t say rich (I guess it depends how you define these things). He’d been married before and had grown children, it was her first marriage. She was not a mega-fox Anna Nicole Smith type at all - just a pretty regular, plain looking woman.
Honestly, I think they met at work, fell in love and got married. He lived to be 93 (he died when his youngest was about 20 I think). Sorry it’s not more exciting.
Nope I was asking about any marriage, legal one that is.
After my mother passed away in 1971 and I was out of the house a year later, my dad started traveling. On one of his trips to Costa Rica, he met a woman with a young boy (she had been widowed a month before her son was born).
After a couple more trips down there to get acquainted, he brought her and her little boy up here and married her. There was 30 years difference in their ages and, in fact, she was a few months younger than her oldest step-son (my brother).
The marriage lasted until after my step-brother graduated from college and got married to his high school sweetheart. Within days of his marriage, my step-mother was on a plane back to Costa Rica - for good.
I really think she broke my dad’s heart, although he would never admit it and never spoke a bad word about her. He even continued to help her out financially long past his legal obligations and divorce settlement were satisfied.
My grandma, who is my grandpa’s second wife, was in her 50s when she got married for the first time (to my grandpa). Possibly even in her early 60s…I don’t quite know her age. Grandpa was in his 60s.
They’ve been married 20+ years now. Still act like silly newlyweds. It’s very sweet 
What, ever? A girl I knew well dropped out of high school to marry a guy who proposed on the second date (as was his habit; just no one else had fallen for it). She was 17. She is now on her third, apparently permanent, marriage and has a cute little girl. Her whole extended family was crazy. I used to work with her mom at about this time and Mom-lady was clearly thrilled over the romance of the whole thing. I wasn’t 18 yet when she asked me “Do you ever think you’ll find someone and get married?” Because clearly I was getting kind of old, see, and I was probably worryingly academic what with going to college and all. Mom eventually left her (fairly sane) husband and became a fundamentalist.
I have two good friends who got married at 19, are just fine.
My husband’s grandpa was one of those old iron men who never die; he remarried for the third time well into his 70’s.
Age difference: I have several friends in couples where the wife is ~10 years older than the husband. It’s practically a habit with my BILs. I know a woman who is 13 years older than her fiance (that one’s all good), and there’s the one I’m slightly worried about where she’s ~36 and he’s 23 and she has 5 kids, the oldest of whom is 13. I’m kind of wondering how the older kids are going to feel about that, esp. given that their dad only died about a year ago. Oh well I guess it will work out. Apparently the guy had to do a lot of talking to get her to agree, but they’re engaged now.
I was 16 years older than my late husband. When we married, I was 41 and he was 26. It was a first marriage for both of us, and was very happy.
I am currently 49, and am dating a guy who is 27.
What can I say? The young guys like me. It helps that I look much younger; I regularly get mistaken for being in my mid-30s.
Youngest person I know that got married was me, at 19. I don’t know any oldsters. I guess my parents did in their late 40’s (not to each other, second marriages for both)
Similar story with my maternal grandparents, my Grandfather was born in 1900 and fought in WW1. My Grandmother wasn’t born until 1923.
I knew two people in high school who got married at 17 or 18, right around graduation. I mean, they didn’t marry each other, I knew two separate people… Neither case involved a pregnancy.
Oldest/largest age difference is wrapped into one: a few years back a family friend - I think he was 59 at the time - married a 24-year-old. They’ve since divorced.
My father’s parents married at the ages of 15 and 16, so she was the youngest person I knew (although not at the time, of course). That marriage didn’t last.
I can’t think of the oldest-age newlyweds I know of.
The largest gap I know if is about 20 years between bride and groom, not very unusual.
When I was 16 and working my first job at a drive-through hamburger joint (making something like $1.25 an hour!), I had a co-worker, my age, who had been married since she was 14. She was pregnant and had to get some kind of special parental permission to get married.
They had a little boy and at the time we worked together, she was the sole bread winner (at $1.25 an hour!) because her husband couldn’t hold a job. They had a one or two room basement apartment that cost, if I remember correctly, around $45.00 a month (maybe $35.00). She was a very good mom and very responsible.
Her husband eventually got his shit together, more or less, and got a job. They had another baby and she got her GED.
I lost touch with her for a while but then caught up with her several years later. She had had another baby but by that time the marriage was pretty rocky and the last I heard, she was divorcing him.
But, yeah, she would be the youngest that I know.
I was 19 (almost 20) the first time and 32 (I think) the second (and last!) time.
A girl I went to school with got married at 13; she lied about being pregnant so her boyfriend would marry her, and then she actually got pregnant. (Then they got divorced, she remarried, had another baby, and had 2 kids and 2 divorces by the time she was 16.)
My great-aunt married at 93, to a man who was 95. They had 6 happy years of marriage, and then both died within a month or so of each other.
I know a few different couples with a 20+ year age difference.
The first time my aunt got married, she was 22-ish and her husband was 25 years older. (He was actually the ex-husband of one of her high school teachers.)
The second time she got married, it was to a man 10 years older than her. The man was 60 and had never been married before.
A woman I know married at 17 because she was pregnant.
A man in my neighbourhood was 51 when he married. That’s the oldest that I personally know of.
One of my grandmother’s friends was 9 years younger than her husband.
A friend of mine from high school had parents that married very young. She was 17, the husband 15, got married early due to pregnancy, but somehow things worked out for them. He worked 3 jobs, joined the military at 18, got a master’s degree, started a successful company in his 20s, and they’re now very comfortable, with three grown children and two grandchildren by the time they were 40!
For the oldest groom, as well as the biggest age gap I can think of - not someone I knew personally of course, but I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Julio Iglesias’ dad - also named Julio Iglesias - who married a woman in her late 30s when he was in his late 80s - probably a 50+ year age gap there. They had two children, the second one being born 7 months after he died at age 90. So the famous singer, Julio Iglesias Jr, has two half-siblings that are 60+ years younger than himself. Pretty unbelievable!
A girl that I went to college with had had a baby at age 14 (although she didn’t get married). She was just finishing her degree at age 29 when her 14 year old daughter announced that she was pregnant! Poor Cindy was a grandmother before she turned 30!