Happy Valentine's Day!

Couple Reunite After More Than 60 Years

ADRIAN, Mich. - Willard Mason and Ilah Ost are giving new meaning to the phrase: "Love is patient." More than 60 years ago, the couple were engaged to be married, but life's circumstances got in the way.

Now, after they each married others, raised families and their spouses died, the two are together again.

"Ilah was my first girlfriend," Mason told The Daily Telegram. "I first met her when I was a sophomore at Blissfield High School."

The two began dating and got engaged.

But in 1941, Mason moved to Ypsilanti to work at the Willow Run bomber plant. There, he met a woman named Helvi, and broke his engagement to Ost. He married Helvi in 1942.

Ost later married her husband, Marvin, and had three children before he died in 1974.

Mason's wife died in 2003, and by chance, he ran into Ost's brother in Blissfield in 2004, and he encouraged Mason to call Ost.

The two started dating, with Mason driving from his home near Houghton Lake to Adrian, where Ost lived.

On one of his trips to Adrian, Mason blacked out and struck a tree with his car. Tests showed he needed a new pacemaker, Mason said.

He then moved to near Adrian and invited Ost to move in with him.

"We get along perfectly," Mason said. "We've never had an argument. She's a great cook, and she takes care of me."

Mason and Ost spend much of their time with friends and family, and Mason marvels at how the two have gotten back together after so many years.

"You don't know how our lives might have turned out if we'd gotten married in 1941," Mason said. "But now, she has a wonderful family and so do I."