Ninety-year-old former US senator Harris Wofford has said that he is getting married to a man -- 50 years younger to him -- almost 20 years after his wife died, the media reported on Monday.
Wofford, a Democrat who was also a top adviser to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., announced his marriage to Matthew Charlton in a New York Times op-ed published on Sunday, CNN reported.
“Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall -- straight, gay or in between,” Wofford wrote.
“I don’t categorise myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness.” he said.
Wofford’s wife, Clare, died in 1996 after battling acute leukemia.
He wrote of their close bond and the balance between him, the romantic, and her, a realist.
“I assumed that I was too old to seek or expect another romance,” Wofford wrote of his wife’s death. “But five years later, standing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I sensed a creative hour and did not want to miss it.”
{{/usCountry}}“I assumed that I was too old to seek or expect another romance,” Wofford wrote of his wife’s death. “But five years later, standing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I sensed a creative hour and did not want to miss it.”
{{/usCountry}}Wofford, 75 at the time, wrote of meeting Charlton, then 25, on the beach.