All they remember is that they were on an elevator. But what do the details matter now?
A year ago, Bill Miller saw her standing there and was dazzled by her beauty. He asked her name and she told him: Jeanne Hamilton. He dropped her a smooth line.
"Sounds like a movie actress," he said, grinning like the Cheshire cat. She got off the elevator at Sunrise Senior Living-Brighton Gardens Assisted Living of Pikesville, flushed, intrigued.
The next day, she saw him again, and on an impulse, blew him a kiss. They've been inseparable ever since.
It's a classic tale of boy-meets-girl. Except in this case, the boy is 99 and the girl is 84.
"It was love at first sight, actually," said Miller, just after a gallant show of kissing Hamilton's small hand, which he will hold at a Valentine's Day dance at the center today.
"We're lucky," Hamilton said.
Experts say it takes more than luck to find love late in life, or to keep the fires burning well into the senior years. With more Americans living longer, tales of long-term love and late-blooming romances offer lessons to today's Match.com generation.
"They really did grow up in a different social-historical context," said Finnegan Alford-Cooper, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Stetson University in Florida who is the author of For Keeps, a study of 576 couples who had been married 50 years or more. "Their values and beliefs about love and marriage were really quite different."
In surveying couples for For Keeps, which came out in 1998, and a subsequent study of 540 other longtime spouses, Alford-Cooper found that nearly all the seniors were adept at putting their mates and families before themselves.
"They grew up with a sense that you had to make it work, you had to hang in through the difficult times; you can't just bail out when things don't go your way," Alford-Cooper said. "They felt that younger people were more selfish and more self-centered than [the seniors] felt they were growing up."
Seniors' perspective on romance helps them not only to stay in relationships but also to find new love - even in the winter of life.
Alexis Abramson, a lifestyles gerontologist for Retirement Living TV, said there are a "growing number of single people who are mature adults." Some struggle with feeling unattractive or with grown children who are not excited about them dating again.
On the other hand, she said, "The conversations and the expectations come easier because you've had a lifetime of experiences that you can draw from."
Seniors who have loved long and well find younger generations' angst about love a bit baffling. For three couples interviewed recently at Brighton Gardens, the answer to the burning question - "What's the secret?" - is simple.
"Commitment," said Anne W. Bloom, wife of Samuel Bloom for 62 years. "I don't think the young people know what the word 'commitment' means."
The Blooms retired together to the assisted-living center. She's 81 now; he'll be 87 next month.
Theirs hasn't been a syrupy journey of moonlight walks, roses and sweet nothings. It has been more one of family trips and laughter and straight shooting.
Samuel proposed to her by saying, simply, "Annie, I had a dream last night that I changed your name to mine. Wanna marry me?"
She did.
"He was a red-headed sailor, and I wanted all my kids to be redheads," said Anne. "And he was always very nice. I liked the way he treated my mother. And I liked the way he treated me."
They've survived a lot - Samuel going off to war, a son with a brain aneurism, a daughter battling lung cancer. Samuel can't hear very well now, and his peripheral vision is all but gone.
But not once, through all the low moments, have they thought of divorcing.
"Never entered our minds," said Samuel. "Simple as that."
Then there's the love story of Elsie and Louie Swartz.
She was in high school when he spied her walking to and fro in front of the house where he was renting a room. There were none of the machinations of today's dating traditions. No "wait-three-days-before-calling-for-a-date." No "pretend-to-be-busy-when-he-finally-does-call." Back then, hoops were for rolling, not jumping through.
"He was on the night shift and went to school during the day," said Elsie, 83. "I used to pass him when he would sit on the porch. He would smile; I would smile. A smile turned into a big smile, a 'Hello' and a 'How are you?' We started to talk and one thing led to another."
The Swartzes have been married now 65 years - a happy marriage, Elsie said, which meant, to her, family togetherness, traveling and mutual support.
But the past few years have been a trial. Louie, 88, has Alzheimer's, and it's getting worse.
"At the beginning, when I would come to visit, he would say, 'Oh, look how beautiful you are,'" Elsie said. "And if he saw someone, he'd say, 'This is my wife. Isn't she gorgeous?'"
Today, Louie barely recognizes Elsie when she comes to visit him in his room at the Reminiscence section of Brighton Gardens.
But she still comes, just about every day, and sits by his bed. Mostly nowadays, Louie just sleeps.
"He gets cold," Elsie said, her voice low and crackly. "So I have to put my jacket on him to keep him warm."
Such small acts of kindness characterize the love affairs of the Blooms, the Swartzes and Bill Miller and Jeanne Hamilton.
Samuel Bloom doesn't move too well anymore, so Anne bends, slowly, to fasten his shoes. When she stands upright again, her face is red from the effort.
"Hey! You're all sunburned," he jokes. Which means, "Thank you."
In return, Anne play-punches him in the belly. Which means, "You're welcome."
At 99, Bill still takes care of Jeanne. He cuts Jeanne's meat on her dinner plate and opens the cream for her to put in her coffee. Every day, they dress in the same colors.
"At night when I say good night to her, we've already determined what we're going to wear the next day," Bill said. "And in the morning, when I see her for breakfast, I tell her I missed her the 12 hours that we were away."
If there's only one lesson Alford-Cooper learned from all studies of lifelong lovers such as these three couples, it was this:
"You have to be flexible," she said, "and willing to give more than you get."
Anne and Samuel Bloom know this. Bill and Jeanne, too.
And Elsie Swartz knows it all too well - 65 years, three sons, several grands and great-grands, and thousands and thousands of forgotten memories later.
"It's been difficult," said Elsie. "But when I look back, we had, I think, a happy family."
tanika.white@baltsun.com