After the death of his wife in 2017, Jim Adams found some comfort in his White Rock, B.C. art studio.
“As someone said to me, you never get over it, you just get used to it,” the 79-year-old painter and retired college art professor told Global News.
In the midst of an isolating pandemic, however, both Adams’ house and art studio became too quiet.
He took a chance, and signed up for an online dating site for seniors which aims to help users over the age of 50 find love by matching them with compatible dates, based on a personality test.
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“I need something more in my life, I need a connection,” Adams told Global News.
“I need someone to talk to, someone to hold hands with, so I tried.”
He knew it was always a long shot.
Just as Adams started using the service, 79-year-old Audrey Coutts — also of White Rock — was getting ready to shut down her own profile.
She wasn’t impressed with many of the candidates the dating service matched her with.
“Some men would contact me and the message would be, ‘Contact me if you’d like,’ or ‘I like your picture,'” she explained.
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Towering at six feet, eight inches, Adams had been clear in his profile: he was looking for a tall woman. Coutts just happened to be five feet 10 inches tall.
They matched just in time and had an instant connection.
“Being very tall it makes me feel a little more at ease to have someone whose head is a little closer to mine,” Adams explained.
The relationship progressed quickly, and the couple got married on Sept. 25 — less than a year after their somewhat awkward first date at a bistro.
“I come back in and I sit down again and say I had to go back home because I forgot my wallet,” said Adams, laughing.
Before he proposed, he added a ring to a painting that is now part of an exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. On the ring is the name of the woman he already knew he would spend the rest of his life with.
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“Saying the vows and holding each other’s hand was very emotional,” Coutts said of their small, family-focused wedding.
The couple still hasn’t taken a honeymoon — the excitement of the past year is enough for now, they said.
“I told everyone when I thanked them for coming, I said, ‘Now we’re going to go home, we’re going to put the laundry in the dryer, and we’re going to sit down and take a nap,’ which is exactly what we did.”
Their inspiring pandemic love story eventually caught international attention, and was published in both People magazine and Oprah Daily.
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