Husband Was so Heartbroken When His Wife of 68 Years Passed Away, He Followed Her 33 Hours Later

From their teens, they knew they were the one for each other and they couldn't live without the other. So they didn't.

By Esha Iyer

January 20, 2023

Posted January 20, 2023

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on December 6, 2019. It has since been updated.

In a world that is filled with divorces, cheating, breakups, and separations, finding that one person whom you can see yourself growing old with is like finding a needle in a haystack. But there are some souls who were lucky enough to find each other and have decades of marriage under their belt. And that kind of love is the one where they absolutely cannot live without each other. So when they pass away, they do so together. Just like this Minnesota couple, who after 68 years of marriage, passed away within 33 hours of each other.

Corinne and Robert “Bob” Johnson have been inseparable since they were teenagers. Having grown up beside each other on a farm in Nicollet County, according to their obituaries, the two quickly fell in love with each other. Bob - Corinne's brother Harold's best friend - and Corinne then tied the knot on October 20, 1951. Since the farm played an important role in their lives, as it certainly brought them together, they weren't about to leave it.

“[Corinne] got her first taste of life as a farmer’s wife when Robert worked all day harvesting with his brother Jerry before their wedding ceremony,” her obituary states. And over the next 67 years, the couple not only grew crops and raised livestock, but brought up a beautiful family that expanded. “Robert’s hands were evidence he was a hard worker on the farm but he always made time to be there for his seven children,” Bob’s obituary states, according to People. “He would milk the cows at all hours of the night in order to go to his children’s sporting events. He and his wife put thousands of miles on their car to watch their kids participate.”

Parents to seven kids, grandparents to 14, and great grandparents to 15, the couple enjoyed decades of a happy, full home. And then just six months ago, 88-year-old Bob was admitted into the hospital for his cancer. Not long after, the 87-year-old Corinne joined him the hospital when she suffered congestive heart failure, reported Kare 11.

Just days before Corinne died on November 24, 2019, she kissed her beloved and whispered, "I love you." And when Bob received the news of her passing, he had tears in his eyes. “When mom passed, they pulled the curtain between the two beds, he just stared at the curtain,” said Beth Kinkeade, one of the couple’s seven children.

Unable to bear the thought of going on without his wife, he just gave up the battle against his cancer just 33 hours later. “I sort of thought he looked like he could go for weeks,” their son Bruce Johnson, who is an oncologist, said, according to Global News CA. “As soon as mom died, he went downhill and died in a day. It’s hard to imagine it’s a coincidence.”

However, their kids noticed that it was typical of their dad to let their mom go first. Brent mentioned that their father was the type to put others first. “So it was only fitting that in the end he waited for mother to go first and then he passed away,” he said, reported RFDTV.

As painful as their passing, and that too one after the other, was for the children, they knew it was for the best. Their daughter Lora Dennis is glad that her parents are now together once again. “I think we all fretted about what would happen when one of them went and how would the other one survive and their plan was to not have us worry about that,” she said. “How could anything be better than that?” “I think we all know that they’re in a better place,” she added.