Finding true love across the hall at the Chateau

It was just after Bible study at Chateau Girardeau. Ken Moxey walked his lady friend, Mary Jo Kaempfer, to her apartment. It was right across from his -- they joked that the hallway carpet was worn thin from all the visiting -- but he didn't go home just yet.

He got down on one knee and asked Kaempfer to be his wife. She said yes, but wondered.

"Do you want to take on all these problems I have?" she asked, thinking of her seven oral cancer surgeries and the scars they'd left behind.

Moxey took her hand. "If you are going to have problems, wouldn't it be better for us to go through them together?"

That was March 25. On Saturday, the happy couple, both 77, married at First Presbyterian Church in Cape Girardeau. The sanctuary was packed with friends from the Chateau, a senior-citizen complex.

It sprang from devastation at the end of decades-long marriages, with Kaempfer losing her husband 1999 and Moxey losing his wife in 2001. It bloomed during dinners and Bible studies and then a visit to Big Oak Tree State Park in Mississippi County, when Kaempfer was having a tough time balancing on the boardwalk. Moxey offered his arm. He said it felt just right.

She held back from giving her heart, assuring her sister it wasn't romantic -- a former Baptist minister and psychology professor would be too dull for her. But she fell in love with his sense of humor and giving spirit, and he fell in love with her passion for life.

So they're off on a four-day honeymoon in St. Louis to visit all the museums, they said. They will move into her place when they return.

Well-wishers crowded around the couple at their reception. "Have a long and happy life," they said. "Have a long and happy marriage."

"We will," Kaempfer and Moxey replied.

And everyone knew they believed it.