83-year-olds find love during breakfast

Palm Coast Observer
Neighbors

After enduring her husband’s death, Thelma Chisholm found solace in a Monday morning hospice bereavement group.

But she found more than comfort during breakfast, held weekly at Bob Evans, in Palm Coast. Thelma also found love.

That love was celebrated 9 a.m. Monday, Aug. 22, when she married Ed Poliak, 83, at Bob Evans, the same time and place when they first met.

“(This) is a wonderful testament and witness to when love can happen,” said the Rev. Sheryl Sumlin-Barclay, service chaplain for Hospice of Volusia/Flagler, who performed the ceremony. “Love happened, and all of these people are celebrating. I just think it’s kind of cute.”

Group members, along with friends and family, gathered to witness the before-breakfast nuptials.

“I loved this man from the first day I saw him,” Thelma said after saying, “I do.” “My husband had passed away seven months previously, and I thought, ‘I don’t know if this is the right thing to say or not,’ but I said it under my breath — ‘I hope he asks me for a date sometime.’”

“It took him til March,” Thelma remembered. “But he did it.”

Ed admitted that he didn’t have the same first-sight feeling, but over time he found that “the chemistry was just there.”