From This Day Forward

Jim Mullins and Eva Wilson-Mullins kiss each other after being married at The Lutheran Home.

TYLER GRAEF ~ tgraef@semissourian.com

Eva Wilson-Mullins and Jim Mullins wed at The Lutheran Home

“It wasn’t a special day, it’s just our special day now,” says 82-year-old Mrs. Eva Wilson-Mullins, as she recalls her and 81-year-old Mr. James “Jim” Mullins’ wedding and why they chose that specific date. “We decided at our age, why should we wait a long time,” Wilson-Mullins adds. “Love doesn’t leave you just because you’re old. We found that out.”

On November 10, 2018, the couple said “I do” at The Lutheran Home, the place where they both live and became acquainted with each other.

Eva Wilson-Mullins is escorted down the aisle by her son.

TYLER GRAEF ~ tgraef@semissourian.com

Wilson-Mullins moved to the assisted living facility in July 2017, and Mullins showed up a few months later after a medical incident. They met at a musical event hosted by The Lutheran Home.

Jim Mullins waits for Eva Wilson-Mullins at the end of the aisle on their wedding day.

TYLER GRAEF ~ tgraef@semissourian.com

“I came here assuming I was just going to come here to die,” Mullins shares. “That’s the way I felt. I was sitting in the corner, kind of staring at the floor, and Eva came over and started talking to me.”

“I had tears down my face because I had lost a family member, and the music made me sad,” Wilson-Mullins recalls. “Ms. Diane, one of the ladies that helps us, dried my eyes and talked to me. Jim heard all of that. So after she was gone, Jim told me, ‘You’ll feel better after while.’ After the concert was over, I thought about how nice of him it was to notice and make a comment, so I said to him, ‘I want to thank you for being a friend,’ and he put his hand over mine and said, ‘We’re friends forever.’ That was the way we first connected.”

The couple enjoys accompanying each other to group activities at The Lutheran Home. Sometimes, they take drives. Their most recent one was to see the color-changing fall leaves. The couple bonds over their shared enthusiasm for Fox News and reminisce on the days when they could still jitterbug. Mullins gives Wilson-Mullins all the credit for “breaking him out of his shell.”

“I’m a person that likes to get to know people when I’m around them,” Wilson-Mullins says. “I’d go from table to table when I first got in. Each day, I’d learn a little bit more about those people. Jim was one of them. I thought he was an interesting person because he stayed in his room all the time and he kept his door closed most of the time. He just didn’t have contact with people, and I felt bad for him. So I began to talk to him when I would go by in the morning. If the chair didn’t have a person in it, I would sometimes sit down and talk a little longer.”

“We just kept talking,” Mullins says. “When I was a park superintendent, I had to be friendly with everybody. I thought I had lost that ability. I was afraid to be social. She brought it out of me.”

“The more I talked to him, the more I liked him,” Wilson-Mullins adds.

Diane Winningham, a member of the activities staff at The Lutheran Home, says Mullins and Wilson-Mullins were “meant to be.”

“The last time we had music in here, right before they were married, there were no tears,” Winningham says. “They were just so happy.”

They invited all of the residents to their wedding ceremony and stood under a “great big flower arch,” Mullins says. He wore a boutonniere and a suit, and Wilson-Mullins wore a maroon dress and a double strand of small pearls around her neck.

“There were all kinds of flowers, they looked like wildflowers,” Wilson-Mullins says. “Mostly bronze and yellow-colored. We just said we wanted something that looked pretty, and some people even took a bouquet of flowers home.”

Mullins waited for Wilson-Mullins at the end of the aisle with the reverend and his nephew as his best man. Wilson-Mullins’ son walked her down the aisle, and her best friend and fellow resident Lettie stood by her side during the ceremony.

“There were just a little bit of jitters because of all the people,” Wilson-Mullins says. “I was happy and Jim was happy; it was a delightful experience.”

A week after the wedding, both of them agree that things have been great, and Mullins says he thinks things will always be great.

“We don’t know how long it’ll be, but we will be together,” Wilson-Mullins adds with a smile.