Anyone ever heard of widowed parents of a married couple getting together and becoming a couple?
Like the mother of the bride and father of the groom becoming an item.
In the original Brady Bunch series, Mike’s father married Carol’s mother.
Should I be embarrassed for remembering that?
I have heard of it a number of times. In fact, I am pretty sure there is someone on this board that said it happened to them although I couldn’t tell you who.
Wasn’t this used on The Simpsons? I think there was an episode where Homer’s father dated Marge’s mother, though it may not strictly apply since
Homer’s mother is not actually dead, but is a fugitive from justice.
Mike and carol were the father and mother of the Brady bunch? And their parents got married? Wow!
Mike and Carol are the parents on the Brady Bunch, yes, but I was mistaken - it’s Mike and Carol’s grandparents (his grandfather and her grandmother) that get married. See List of The Brady Bunch episodes - Wikipedia (scroll down to “You’re Never Too Old” near the end of the fourth season).
Well, it involves divorces rather than widowing, and the parents marry before their children become a couple, but there is the very odd situation in the manga and anime Marmalade Boy. Miki Koishikawa is the central character, and eventually becomes a couple with the “marmalade boy” Yuu Matsuura, but at the start of the series Miki and Yuu’s parents both divorce, so that Miki’s father can marry Yuu’s mother, and Miki’s mother can marry Yuu’s father. They then buy a large house so that all six can live together, and naturally the double step-siblings Miki and Yuu fall in love with each other through living together (innocently, of course, at the start). So the central couple’s parents marry each other – but before they become the central couple, which rather changes the dynamics.
One example would be on the TV program One Day at a Time:
Barbara and Mark get married. Barbara’s divorced mother Ann later marries Mark’s divorced father Sam.
I have good friends who did the opposite. They were both teenagers when their divorced parents married. The man lived with his father in NY while the woman lived with her father and his mother in Providence. (I think I have the matchups correct, but it doesn’t really matter.) A few years later they married. That was about 55 years ago and they are still married.
Richard was married to my aunt, Margaret. Richard and Margaret’s daughter, Caroline, married a nice young fellow named Andy, whose mother, Fiona, was widowed. A few years later, Margaret passed away, and now Richard and Fiona are married (several years later).
I keep waiting for Caroline and Andy’s children to mutate, now that their parents are siblings.
I saw this situation in a pair of death notices once. The older couple had died together in a car wreck, and the death notices listed son and daughter in law, and daughter and son in law, respectively. I read the death notices twice each to be sure I had it clear. No way of knowing which marriage came first in my example…
Fictional: A Summer Place starring Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee as the teenaged lovers (who do get married; this movie was made in 1959). His mother and her father, divorced from their original spouses, rekindle their youthful affair and also get married. Then they all gather and eat TV dinners together.
There’s a couple of sets of double first cousins in my family (my grandfather married his brother’s sister-in-law), but no example of what you’re describing.
In the mid-80s I dated a girl who’s grandparents married each other after their respective spouses passed. It was not clear to me whether it was a marriage of convenience or of love but I remember being a bit confused when it became clear her paternal grandmother was married to her maternal grandfather.
There is a pair of identical twins that married another set up of identical twins in my home town. Makes sense I suppose. Two of their kids were in my graduating class. They were both first cousins and genetic siblings.
While Laura Ingalls Wilder has no living descendants, one of her mother’s sisters married one of her father’s brothers, and one of her mother’s brothers married one of her father’s sisters. These double first cousin lines have survived.
My own grandparents. By the time my parents were married, both my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother had been widowed. Actually, Grandma had been working for Grandpa as the family cook, since he was widowed with eight kids. Eventually, I think around the same year I was born, they were married. So they were the only grandparents I ever knew, and it makes for a really strange family tree.
Oh, and to make matters more confusing, in Grandma’s first marriage (to my paternal grandfather), his brother was married to her sister.
Not quite what you’re asking, but close:
One of my cousins got married some years ago. His grandfather got together with the bride’s grandmother. They never got married, but they were an item for quite number of years until ill health curbed their ability to travel.
I should add that my grandparents’ marriage turned out to be one of the strongest relationships in the entire extended family; they were in-laws as well as spouses. Plus she was a great cook and he was a great baker; a winning combination.
Well, it must eliminate the debate about where to spend Christmas. Must be hard to get used to, though, for your parents.