German couple, aged 102 and 98, celebrate 80th wedding anniversary

For Gottfried Schmelzer, it was love at first sight.

"We hit it off from the very first moment," says the 102-year-old in his flat in Bad Sobernheim, south-west of the German city of Mainz.

He met his wife Ursula while working for an administrative authority in Berlin. They married soon afterwards - exactly 80 years ago - in 1944.

This makes the Schmelzers the longest married couple in Germany, according to research by the State Chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate. State Premier Malu Dreyer congratulated them personally.

"I was just 19 and my husband 22," 98-year-old Ursula said, remembering their wedding. He had come to Berlin from Romania a year earlier. "Love at first sight? No," she says. But: "He was persistent. He wanted me. And then I had nothing against it."

Gottfried Schmelzer explains: "I accompanied her to the train, and when she said goodbye, I went with her, and from then on I always went with her."

The couple can look back on an eventful life with many stops and journeys that they still remember fondly today. "We take a lot of trips down memory lane," she says about the conversations with her husband.

"Our wedding had a few stumbling blocks," recalls the 102-year-old. The necessary papers could not be found because the Berlin registry office responsible had been bombed out.

"Then the phone calls started." The papers had been stored in the Harz Mountains. Schmelzer set off immediately. "We were able to get married the next day."