After they were widowed, Joe, 55, and Kim, 58, connected through a blog Joe was writing. They now live together in Murrysville, Pennsylvania
Kim and Joe: ‘We were calling each other in the middle of the night when we felt overwhelmed’hen Joe lost his wife, Debbie, to breast cancer in July 2012, he was devastated. “The earth moved under my feet. As a family, we didn’t recognise the full extent of the devastation until years later,” he says. “It’s not something you can comprehend when you’re going through it.” At the time, he was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his two children, aged nine and 12.
One day, when Kim was visiting Jack in the cemetery, she noticed that Debbie was buried next to him. “We’d never met but I recognised her surname from the blog,” she says. In late September, she emailed Joe to thank him for the posts he was sharing. “She had signed it saying that her husband was buried next to my wife,” says Joe. “It felt like I was hit with a lightning bolt.”
They met whenever they could and supported each other through their grief. “We were calling each other in the middle of the night when we felt overwhelmed,” says Kim. In April 2014, they shared their relationship with their families. Although it came as a shock, they were supportive. At the end of 2015, Kim and Joe moved in together with all their children. “My vision was quite Brady Bunch, but it was a bit more like the Osbournes,” laughs Joe. “Now we go on vacations together.
Kim works for the government, while Joe has a job in finance. As well as enjoying time together, they also honour the lives of their former partners. “We’re getting married in a few weeks and we’ll have two spare chairs for them as a tribute,” says Kim. “They’re for ever part of our lives.”
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