Meet the world’s oldest married couple, age 214 (combined)

QUITO, Ecuador —  Julio Mora Tapia slipped away from his parents to secretly marry Waldramina Quinteros one February day. Both families disapproved.

Seventy-nine years later, they’re still together — he at 110 years of age, and she at 104, both lucid and in good health, though relatives say they’re a little depressed because they miss their big family get-togethers because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit Ecuador particularly hard.

There are longer marriages, but at the moment no other between people so old, according to Guinness World Records — just short of a combined 215 years. Certification of that achievement displaces the Austin, Texas, couple who had previously been listed as the world’s oldest husband and wife, John and Charlotte Henderson, who have a combined age of 212 years and 52 days.

Mora was born on March 10, 1910, and Quinteros on Oct. 16, 1915. They wed on Feb. 7, 1941, in the first church built by the Spanish in Quito: La Iglesia de El Belen.

The two retired teachers live in the Ecuadorean capital, where in mid-August they received the Guinness certification.

Their daughter Cecilia says they’re both lucid and active, although they no longer have the agility they had before. But “for a month they have been different, more downcast because they miss large family gatherings.”

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And they can gather quite a crowd: four surviving children, 11 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

“Since March, we have not had any of that,” Cecilia said. “My parents need family contact.”

She said her father enjoys watching television and drinking milk and that her mother, who enjoys desserts, likes to read the newspaper every morning.