Couple Met in Orphanage and Fell in Love as Teens — Now They’re Great-Grandparents: 'Meant to Be' (Exclusive)

Peggy Griffin was just 10 years old when she saw her husband Billy for the first time — and she tells PEOPLE she remembers thinking he "was the cutest"

Peggy Griffin, 88, still remembers the very first time she saw her husband. She was just 10 years old and on the playground of the North Carolina orphanage where she grew up.

“I remember that day very well. I thought he was the cutest thing I had ever seen,” she tells PEOPLE.

It was Sept. 2, 1946 and Billy Griffin, 89, had just arrived at what was then called the Methodist Orphanage. “I came out on the playground and she was on the swings," Billy adds. "She tells me she saw me and said, 'I’m gonna marry that guy some day.'"

Both lost their fathers when they were very young and were sent with their siblings to live at the orphanage. “My father died at the age of 37 and left four kids for my mother to support and he had told her if anything ever happens to send us there because he was raised in the same orphanage,” Billy says.

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The couple says they started as friends but when they were both fifteen, Billy walked Peggy home to her cottage one night and held her hand. They’ve been holding hands ever since.

“We always hold hands no matter where we go or what we’re doing and that started when I first walked down that hill to my cottage where I lived,” Peggy recalls. “He took my hand and that was it, I knew then. I feel safe when he’s with me and I’m holding his hand.”

Billy agrees. “I feel lost without holding her hand.”

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The couple says their humble beginnings and lessons learned at the orphanage helped them build a wonderful life.

“They had a dairy farm and they had us work on it and then I had all kinds of jobs, delivering papers, doing accounting for a body shop and as a senior in high school I started working at an appliance distributor sweeping floors in the warehouse,” Billy says.

He worked his way up to be the sales manager and stayed with the company for almost 40 years. Billy says it afforded them a very nice lifestyle. “It was a good life for us," he adds.

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Peggy says that work ethic and shared goals helped keep their marriage strong. The couple will celebrate 70 years of marriage in August and have two children, five grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

“We have the same values and the understanding that in order to have a better life for ourselves and our children that we were going to have to work, save our money, spend wisely so that we would be able to one day own our own home for the first time in our lives," she says.

The couple ended up surpassing their goals, at one time owning two vacation homes, a beach home and a mountain home, and now live together in an apartment at the Templeton of Cary senior living community where Peggy is the cornhole queen.

She even beat Billy in the senior Olympics to take the title. “And he was cheering for me!” she says.

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The two still talk to many of the people they grew up with at the orphanage. As a past alumni president, Billy calls more than 200 of them each year on their birthdays. But Peggy is the former classmate he cherishes most.

“She was a cheerleader and I was lucky enough to play sports [so] she always cheered for me. Everybody loved her and she’s a wonderful person," he says. "I’m very lucky, very fortunate.”

But Peggy believes she’s the lucky one.

“I think it was meant to be," she says. "I feel like God sent him to me so I would never be alone.”

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