Beloit Daily News, Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Discovering Romance Isn’t Restricted
to Young People
to Young People
 | ||
Daily News staff writer
Newlyweds Lloyd and Wanda Hubka always
liked each other - as a teen, Wanda even wrote Lloyd a love
letter - but their spark didn’t fully ignite until some
50 years later, after both had married and become widowed.
“She was single for 10
years,” Lloyd Hubka said. “When she heard I was
available she latched onto me right way. And it didn’t
take long to convince me, either.”
As Valentine’s Day celebrations
end, the 72-year-olds will just begin the festivities Thursday
for their seventh-month wedding anniversary, and they
couldn’t be happier.
The couple first met in 1949, when Lloyd
traveled nearly 150 miles from Wauzeka to his sister’s
home in Beloit for the summer. Wanda lived nearby, and the two
soon became acquainted. Shortly after graduating high school,
Lloyd moved to Beloit and the pair continued to spend time
together.
“We weren’t great
lovers,” Lloyd explained. “We just always liked
each other real good.”
Despite their affection for one another,
Lloyd and Wanda married different people. Lloyd raised four
children with his first wife, Irene, who passed away in 2005.
They had been married for 53 years. Wanda had three sons with
her first husband, Gerald VanWormer, who died in 1996 from
cancer.
Throughout the years, Lloyd coached
Wanda’s sons in Little League and the two occasionally
saw each other at a store or about town. But, for the most
part, they had fallen out of touch.
After their spouses died, Lloyd and Wanda
never dreamed they’d remarry. Two of Lloyd’s
children tried to persuade him to move near them in Tennessee,
and Wanda stayed busy with her church and friends.
“I told God if he wants me to have
a man, ‘You’ll have to bring him
around,’” Wanda said. “Then he came along and
I thought, ‘Well here we go.’”
Lloyd and Wanda didn’t rekindle
their friendship on their own, though. Instead, Wanda’s
sons Steve and Terry VanWormer fight over who brought the
couple together, she said.
Steve came to Irene’s funeral and
told Lloyd that Wanda was available if he ever needed to talk,
but Terry claims the reunion was his doing. Terry saw Lloyd at
a flea market during the summer of 2005 and told Lloyd to call
Wanda because she needed a friend.
“I go, ‘Okay, I’ll call
her,’” Lloyd recalled, but said a trip to Tennessee
and a visit from one of his children delayed the contact. After
a month passed Wanda finally called him.
“He hadn’t called me and I
thought, ‘Should I call him?” Wanda said,
explaining she prayed about it before making a decision.
“Once you make a move you just never know.”
By early October of 2005, Lloyd and Wanda
went on their first date and have been together every night
since, they said. It didn't take long for them to realize their
friendship could turn into something more.
“I guess you might say that it
happened right after that supper,” Lloyd said.
The couple wed July 15, 2006, in front of
a full church, with most of Lloyd’s and Wanda’s
families present.
The first few months of marriage have
treated the couple well, they said, and reuniting with Lloyd
taught Wanda the fun doesn’t end as the years go by.
“There’s nice surprises later
in life,” she said.
