Daily lunch dates were the norm for retired mechanic Clarence Purvis and his wife Carolyn.
“They were unbelievable,” restaurant owner Joyce James told CBS News. “I mean you could tell that they adored each other.”
They ate together at Smith’s restaurant in Reidsville, Georgia six days a week for years until Carolyn passed away.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
“She’s a perfect wife if ever been one,” Clarence told CBS News. “Ain’t nobody loved one another more than we loved one another. Everybody said that.”
But just because his wife passed away, didn’t mean that Clarence couldn’t continue to have lunch with her.
After heading to the cemetery every morning at the age of 93 and kneeling down to give her a kiss, Clarence would bring a picture of his wife to their restaurant so he could eat lunch with her.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
“Baby, I wish you could go home with me. I’d trade places with you,” he would tell her picture.
Clarence and Carolyn met in 1948 and were inseparable ever since.
“Ain’t nobody loved one another more than me and my wife loved one another,” Clarence told WTOC 11. “I wanted what she wanted and she wanted what I wanted.”
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
After lunch, Clarence would return to his wife’s gravesite. He would go there four or five times a day until he wasn’t able to drive.
And when Smith’s Restaurant closed, he just found a new restaurant where he could eat lunch with his wife’s picture.
“We tried to cook for him or take him, nope. It wasn’t nothing but the Dairy Queen,” his daughter Dianne Knight said.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
And the story only gets more romantic from there. Inside his home, is their love lamp.
A lamp that is always kept on to remind him of the eternal flame of love between him and his wife.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
“This here, that lamp ain’t never turned off, not since she came out of the hospital five months before she passed,” Clarence said. “That light was turned on and it ain’t never been turned off.”
The story about Clarence and Carolyn’s love ended up being picked up by the media after a photo of Clarence and his wife’s picture at the restaurant went viral making their love story known around the world.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
Clarence ended up joining his wife in heaven in 2021.
“He became world-known just to show his love for his wife, how much she meant to him,” Dianne Knight said.
“And that was the environment we grew up in all our life,” son Dale Purvis said.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
And Clarence’s children are glad that their parents’ story was told.
“That’s what this world needs today. The kind of love that they had for one another,” said Dianne.
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WTOC – YOUTUBE
They are even happier now that the two of them are together again.
“The pictures of him after momma passed, you hardly saw him smile. As opposed to when we had pictures of him before. But now he’ll be smiling all the time,” said Dale.
