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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 t…

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