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GREENSBORO - Scenes from Ruffin High School’s 1954 yearbook were perhaps a glimpse of things to come for 73-year-old newlyweds Ruth and Elbert Page.

The two appear side by side in their senior photos, separated only by the book’s margin. Another photo of the school’s yearbook staff shows Ruth seated in front of a classroom, and Elbert in the back.

“I don’t remember working with him,” Ruth said.

Those high school memories may have waned, but 55 years later, Ruth and Elbert are making new ones. After a whirlwind courtship, the couple was married Aug. 15 in a garden ceremony at a friend’s home.

They’re as giddy as teenagers.

“He completely fulfills everything that I want in a man,” Ruth said.

It’s not your typical late-in-life love story. Before Ruth and Elbert triumphed in love, they had to overcome tragedy.

Ruth lost her husband of 53 years, Bill Frye, to pancreatic cancer in July 2007. She married him shortly before graduating from high school. After Frye was discharged from the Army, he and Ruth settled in Greensboro.

Ruth described the loneliness she felt after her husband’s death as terrible, and she busied herself with friends and activities.

Meanwhile, in Greenville, S.C., Elbert’s wife of 51 years, Obera, had received a diagnosis of lung cancer. She died in June 2008.

Ruffin High School alumni keep in close contact and word spread about the death of Elbert’s wife. When Ruth learned about it, she sent Elbert a sympathy card, telling him to give her a call if he needed someone to talk to.

“It was helpful when I read it,” Elbert said. Still, he waited a month to call Ruth, saying he “just didn’t know what to say.”

When they finally made that connection, Ruth shared advice about how to deal with losing a spouse. She told him to not sit in the house and wallow in grief.

Elbert followed that advice, going to Home Depot two or three times a week just to browse, and meeting friends for coffee at Hardee’s early in the morning.

Phone calls turned into visits, and an old-fashioned courtship evolved. When Elbert visited Ruth in Greensboro, he spent nights at his sister’s home in Rockingham County. When Ruth went to Greenville, Elbert’s 17-year-old granddaughter chaperoned their dates.

By spring 2009, laughter shared over the silliest of things signaled their friendship had blossomed into love. Their birthdays are a week apart in April, and they celebrated together at Olive Garden. As they left the restaurant, they got the giggles because Ruth couldn’t find the slot for the straw in her to-go cup.

Ruth said Elbert’s sense of humor is one of the things she loves most about him.

“He is a comic. He just keeps me laughing,” she said.

The traveling back and forth got to be too much, so they decided to marry. They have since settled in Ruth’s home in Greensboro. “We moved fast,” Ruth said.

Ruth is an “amazingly” resilient woman who, even in her darkest days as a widow, never caved into despair, said Sonja Beach, her friend of six years. But there were definitely signs of greater renewal once Elbert entered her life, Beach said.

“I could just tell the sparkle came back in her eyes, and the glow came back into her — those things that had been there before that just comes from love having a place to rest,” she said.

Beach described the nuptials as “sweet in every way,” down to the ice cream truck jingle that briefly interrupted the vows.

Ruth and Elbert said their union was met with opposition by some family members because they thought they were marrying too soon.

But the couple believes their relationship is meant to be. Elbert’s first wife met Ruth at school reunions and made a prophetic statement just months before her death.

“She said, ‘I like Ruth. I guess if something happens to me you can marry her,’ ” Elbert said.

As for Ruth, she had made a list of the qualities she wanted in a man. Short of not being a dancer, Elbert met them all.

And Elbert also passed inspection by Missy, the fiercely protective chihuahua that Ruth bought to keep her company after her husband’s death. The dog snuggles up next to Elbert just as easily as she does Ruth.

Less than two months after their wedding, signs of the honeymoon remain evident. Certain actions say it all: the way Elbert rests his arm around her shoulder as they look at an old yearbook, and the way Ruth points at Elbert’s photo and excitedly asks, “Wasn’t he a cute little thing?”

In other ways, they are like an old married couple. Elbert has become accustomed to healthful home-cooked meals made by Ruth. In return, it’s not uncommon for Ruth to return home to find it sparkling clean.

“I spoil him, but he spoils me, too,” she said.

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 627-4881, Ext. 126, or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com