A chance meeting at a senior Lunch & Learn led to love for Gloria Keeney and George Lay.
Now they’re getting married and sharing their love with the Tallahassee Senior Center by asking for donations in lieu of wedding gifts.
Read Gloria and George’s heartwarming story below, and Share the Love!
By Karla Brandt
Gloria Keeney grew up in West Palm Beach, was a travel agent, now works for Aging with Dignity, has been divorced for 20 years and has three adult kids and a cat.
George Lay grew up in a small town in southern Alabama, retired after a career in the military, has been a widower for two years and has two adult kids and two Cocker Spaniels.
It turns out that Gloria and George were made for each other. They met at the Fort Braden Lunch & Learn in May 2016. Their wedding will be in March.
For both of them, attending Lunch & Learn that day was a last-minute choice. Gloria is a regular exhibitor, talking with participants about Aging with Dignity’s Five Wishes living will, but she wasn’t on the schedule for that particular day.
Gloria got a last-minute phone call from Senior Outreach asking if she could fill in for an exhibitor who couldn’t make it, and she said yes. Meanwhile, George’s doctor had just cleared him to drive after a hip replacement, and he decided on the spur of the moment to stop by Lunch & Learn.
“I’d been to L&L once before,” George said. “It was a spontaneous decision to go.”
At the start of every L&L program, the exhibitors introduce themselves. A volunteer says a prayer.
“If nobody else offers, I’ll do it,” Gloria said, and that day she was the one to say it.
“That’s when I really noticed her,” George said. “I thought, I ought to go talk to this lady.”
After the prayer and introductions, Gloria went back to her exhibit table. George went to her table, too. He says, “I thumbed through the Five Wishes document to find a question to ask her.”
Gloria describes what happened next.
“I thought he was very nice and also just a little shy. I said, ‘Here’s my card. When you’re in Tallahassee, come to the office, and I’ll give you a little tour.’ He said, ‘What is there to see in your office?’ I looked at him and started laughing. I replied, ‘Not much.’ Sure enough, a few days later I got an email. He came by, and I gave him the two-minute tour. We talked for about half an hour. I said, ‘Well, I have to get back to work.’ He replied, ‘One last question: Would you consider going out with a much older man?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would. But you’re not that much older.’ We went out to lunch that day. I had a very good idea that he was the man for me on our first date.”
Gloria and George started seeing each other regularly. In October, he proposed.
“It wasn’t really a Hollywood moment,” Gloria says. “I joke that if he went down on one knee, I’d have to help him get up.”
For wedding gifts, they are asking for donations to the Tallahassee Senior Center. Why?
“When I lost my friend Judy Davis, I knew how much the Senior Center meant to her. It was her lifeline,” Gloria says. “They really love people. That’s the real reason.”
Love is, truly, the real reason. Congratulations, George and Gloria!
