Stamford Couple Dies Minutes Apart After 69 Years of Marriage

An Italian couple who had been married for 69 years died less than an hour apart in Stamford, Connecticut, on 13 December.

Giuseppe and Livia Fortuna's love story is no less than a fairy tale. The pair met and fell in love in Rome and married just before the World War II concluded. They have four children.

In the early 1960s, they moved to a house in Stamford's Cove neighbourhood. They stayed there until their health started declining. When they realized they needed to be taken care of, they shifted to the Smith House Health Care Center in Stamford, where they lived together for about a year.

On Saturday, just a day after Livia turned 86, her 91-year-old husband died. One of the couple's daughters called her to tell her the news. "I told her she needed to be strong and that my dad had passed away. She started screaming his name and didn't want to talk and hung up the phone," said Angela Munzenmaier, 62, Daily Mail reports.

Livia and  Giuseppe's other daughter Giuliana DiGeronimo, 67, said: "My mother was in shock to hear that my father had just died. She couldn't breathe and she was having a fit, even though she was on oxygen. At the nursing home, everyone said they were angels. Everybody used to say how much they loved each other and how my father was always trying to help my mother."

The couple's family believes that Livia definitely died of a 'broken heart'.

The couple's 51-yera-old son John Fortuna said that says before their death, his mother tolf one of her grandsons during a telephonic conversations that his grandfather is dying and "I'm going with him."

The couple can now spend eternity together. "They probably couldn't live without the other. They are in a good place and don't have to suffer anymore, and they can just be happy," Munzenmaier said, San Francisco Gate reports.