# Record for the most extreme May/December marriage (age difference)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/record-for-the-most-extreme-may-december-marriage-age-difference/278339 "2004-12-06T08:03:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/record-for-the-most-extreme-may-december-marriage-age-difference/278339/1 "2004-12-06T08:03:28Z")
What’s the record for the largest age difference between two married people? ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2004, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/record-for-the-most-extreme-may-december-marriage-age-difference/278339/2 "2004-12-06T09:24:44Z")
Vicki Lynn Hogan (26) and J. Howard Marshall (89). You may know her better as Anna Nicole Smith. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2004, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/record-for-the-most-extreme-may-december-marriage-age-difference/278339/3 "2004-12-06T12:39:32Z")
89-26 = 63 years is a big age gap, but it’s not the record. Recent coverage of the [last living Civil War widows](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908934.html) mentions some similar or greater marital age differences: > [@](#): > > The last-known Union widow, Gertrude Janeway, died in Jan. 2003 in Tennessee. John Janeway joined the Union army in 1864 and was briefly a POW at Andersonville. The couple married in 1927, after waiting three years until Gertrude turned 18. John was 81. [81-18 = 63] > > The person thought to be the last-known Confederate widow, Alberta Martin, was born Dec, 4, 1906, and died at age 97 in Alabama on May 31, 2004. In 1927, at age 21, she married William Jasper Martin, then 81. Martin joined the Confederate army in May 1864. Upon her husband’s death, she married his grandson from his first marriage. [81-21 = 60] > > The publicity surrounding Alberta Martin’s death prompted relatives of Maudie Celia Hopkins of Arkansas to reveal that the 89-year-old was in fact the last civil war widow. Hopkins married 86-year-old William Cantrell on Feb. 2, 1934, when she was 19. She did so to escape poverty, but kept quiet about the unusual marriage, “I thought people would gossip about it.” Cantrell, who served in the Virginia Infantry, supported her with his Confederate pension of “$25 every two or three months” until his death in 1937. Hopkins has outlived three other husbands. [86-19 = 67] The Hopkins/Cantrell marriage seems to be the official recordholder so far, with a difference of 67 years. But I’m sure I’ve read reports of centenarians in Malaysia or somewhere marrying teenagers, so I wouldn’t bet any money on this as the overall high score. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2004, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/record-for-the-most-extreme-may-december-marriage-age-difference/278339/4 "2004-12-06T13:09:25Z")
The TX Dept of Health report I referenced in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=193302) is AWOL on their new website; but it showed there was a marriage in Texas in 2000 with an age difference of _76 years_ between the bride and groom … ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2004, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/record-for-the-most-extreme-may-december-marriage-age-difference/278339/5 "2004-12-06T16:55:42Z")
Some improvements in the new site, now, though. You can download the individual marriage records (_en masse_) as a tab-delimited text file. Which you can then import into a database program, and run yourself some queries … Um, it’s a public record, but I’d still feel weird putting out people’s names, so I’ll just state that on April 16, 2000, there was a marriage recorded in Aransas County, TX, between a 94-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman. My mind still boggles … “OK, girlie, let’s head out for the honeymoon!” “Um, can we stop by your lawyer first & make sure the will’s updated?”