Two-Time Cancer Survivor Gets Married For The First Time At 73

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A Louisiana couple in their 70s said their age was nothing but a number and it wasn’t going to stop them from walking down the aisle. Audrey Parker Green, 74, and 75-year-old Allen Green decided to get married after 20 years of dating.

“We just want to be voices for the people in their 60s, 70s,” Allen told People. “Just go for it, because you don’t have to live alone in the last part of our years.”

Their two decades together got rough at times with Green getting diagnosed with cancer twice. In November 2002, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. Knowing how brutal cancer treatment can be, she told Allen if he didn’t want to deal with the burden that she understood.

“I told him that if he couldn’t handle it, he could leave, and I wouldn’t hold it against him,” Green said. “He said that, no, he was going to be there with me.”

In October 2008, Green received more devastating news when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She then went and had a double mastectomy.

“He was there with me when I was going through some tough times,” Green continued. “When one person is sick, and another person is healthy, that’s hard on both parties.”

Allen and Green met during their school-age years and got reacquainted 25 years later when Allen decided to reconnect with her after remembering her as a good-hearted person. His advances fell on deaf ears.

 “She gave me such a rough time,” Allen said, he was a divorcee at the time.

But when they saw each other a year and a half later alumni of Scottville High School, Green gave in.

“When I saw him, I said, ‘Oh my God. Here he comes,'” she said. “If he didn’t speak to me, it would only be [us] and God that knew that he had ever tried to call me. That’s when he approached me and said, ‘Ms. Parker, I’m not letting you get away from me this easy this time.'”

Two decades later, Green told Allen to blow her away for her 73rd birthday with a surprise and he did just that when he proposed to her.

“There was screaming and hollering,” Allen said about the special moment. “I said, ‘Now, would you accept me to be your husband?’ Are you wowed now?”…She was saying she was so happy.”

Even though she didn’t plan to tie the knot at this stage pf her life, she has no regrets.

“I’m happy to be married at this point, because I got to do a lot of things that if I was married, I wouldn’t have been able to do,” she said. “When you have children, and you have a husband, that’s your first obligation.”

Her husband wished they got married sooner.

“I think it would’ve worked out good, even if we was married earlier,” he said. “But we can’t change the past. We are grateful for the present, and the time that we are together right now.”