New York's Oldest Married Couple Celebrates With Joint Birthday Party
SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. (CBSNewYork/AP) - A husband and wife married 82 years thought to be one of the oldest married couples in New York are celebrating their birthdays this weekend, and their combined ages will be 212.
Duranord Veillard turned 108 on Saturday. His wife, Jeanne Veillard, won't turn 105 until May.
Many of the Veillards' seven grandchildren, 12 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren celebrated alongside the couple at their Spring Valley home Saturday.
The couple married in November 1932, the same month Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in a landslide victory over Herbert Hoover.
In French Creole, Duranord told CBS2's Dave Carlin God is the secret to a long life.
Veillard is a native of Haiti who was a judge there.
He and his wife moved to the United States in 1968, raising five children while he worked as a hospital laboratory technician.
Though nearly blind and hard of hearing, Veillard still cracks jokes in Creole and does push-ups after getting up before dawn.
"Every morning he gets up and does push-ups and he prays to God to give him more time," his daughter said. "And he says to get lots of sleep."
The Veillards have been married 82 years.
"It's very motivational to be around them. When I'm down I look to them to rise up they're an inspiration, they are they keep us running and we keep them running too," the couple's grandson Eric Alexis said.
So what do you get a 108-year-old for his birthday? Just food from his homeland and the family he loves gathered around him.
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