make preferableYEREVAN. – Mnatsakan Baghdasaryan, 79, from Armenia’s Gyumri city, and Jemik Karapetyan, 78, from Vanadzor city had noticed each other at a nursing home in capital city Yerevan, and they got married eight years ago.
Baghdasaryan told Armenian News-NEWS.am that many elderly in the nursing home find a friend of the opposite sex and get married to spend the final years of their lives together.
“And one day a told Jemik, ‘Girl, will you take me [as your husband]? And she said, “You don’t smoke, you don’t drink, so I agree.’ And I had just quit both of them. I was lucky, and we joined together,” Grandpa Mnatsakan said, with a smile.
Karapetyan, on the other hand, noted that she had agreed to “tie the knot” with Baghdasaryan when she learned of his profession.
“I saw that he was an electrical engineer, [and] I said, ‘If you drink and smoke here, then no.’ And he responded that he neither drinks, nor smokes. [But] now, it’s the opposite; he doesn’t drink, [but] I drink,” Grandma Jemik joked around.
Jemik Karapetyan was left an orphan after the Patriotic War, had gotten married and had one son who had died at a young age. She lived in Vanadzor for a long time, but, subsequently, she lost her home due to circumstances, and therefore she had no choice but to move to a nursing home. Mnatsakan Baghdasaryan, on the other hand, had lost his first wife and, according to him, his three sons live in Belgium.
Grandma Jemik added that they often forget that they are living in a nursing home.
“Once I come out of the room, then I sense that we are in a nursing home,” she noted, in particular.
