Dating was the furthest thing from 88-year-old David Fankushen’s mind when Judi Wyant first reached out.
Wyant, 83, sent a simple message five years ago on Facebook: “Do you remember me?”
If he were being honest, Fankushen could barely place Wyant, but her name sounded familiar, and he vaguely recalled their kids being friends decades earlier.
Fankushen wrote back, and the two became fast pen pals. When they met for lunch soon after in Palo Alto, conversation flowed easily, as if they’d been friends for ages.
During the Covid pandemic, they kept in touch over Facebook. Fankushen, who lives in San Anselmo in Marin County, was delighted each time Wyant, who lives more than two hours south in Aptos in Santa Cruz County, sent hearts in response to his Facebook posts. After pandemic lockdowns ended, the two began meeting frequently for lunch.
“They would just sit on a bench eating ice cream and just giggle. They had so much fun catching up,” Laurie Okamura, Wyant’s daughter, told J.
In spring 2023, Wyant and Fankushen shifted from friends to romantic partners. Much to their surprise, they say they’re experiencing love in their 80s in a way neither of them has felt before.
“It’s like a missing piece of a puzzle, really and truly,” Wyant said. “We never argue. We communicate really well. It’s perfect.”
“It’s like an unbelievable gift for both of us,” Fankushen added.
While Fankushen had a hard time recalling how he once knew Wyant, his two daughters and son remembered her well.
“I remember going over to Judi’s house with my mom,” Laura Fankushen, David’s oldest, said.
In the early 1970s, when both families were living in Saratoga in the South Bay, Wyant was a friend of Fankushen’s then-wife. Their sons were the same age and played together.
Early in their current relationship, when Wyant first visited Fankushen’s home, she recognized an old plastic plate sitting on his drying rack, with a hand-drawn Snoopy lying atop a log. It’s a dish that Laura made as a kid, and one he uses often. Wyant remembered when it was made — at her home, some 50 years ago.
Both Fankushen and Wyant divorced in the late 1970s. Fankushen moved up to San Anselmo in the 1990s, and Wyant opened an antique jewelry store in downtown Santa Cruz. She also remarried. Her second husband, Larry Franich, died in 2015.
“My mom was heartbroken when her husband had passed,” Okamura told J. “It honestly just makes me so happy to see them finding love at this age.”
The couple, soon approaching three years together, commute across the Bay Area on alternating weeks to visit each other, spending five days a week together. When Wyant drives up to San Anselmo, she brings her two Havanese dogs, Zoe and Piper.
“Sad to say, we don’t go up Mount Tam or stuff like that now, but we do have a nice walk along the bay by my place, where there are a lot of benches,” Fankushen said.
They enjoy going to each other’s congregations, Chadeish Yameinu in Santa Cruz and Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon. For date nights, they dine at local restaurants
“They talk to people at other tables,” said Okamura, who joins them for dinner every two weeks. “They’re always making new friends.”
The couple have had frank and serious conversations about money, health and mortality.
“Everything’s totally understood,” Wyant said. Other than Fankushen’s bad back, the two feel they are in good health. “We are lucky so far.”
“I think being happy in your old life keeps your mind off of your body,” she added.
Every morning, the couple plays the New York Times Spelling Bee and Wordle games, which brings out Fankushen’s competitive side. They compare scores with Okamura and her husband.
“At eight o’clock, we send in our results,” Wyant said.
“There’s a joyfulness and youthfulness to him that he’s always had, and I’m just very happy that he’s met someone who really appreciates him,” Laura Fankushen said.
She added that the same is true for her mother, who also has a love-after-80 story of her own. “They’ve been going out for two years.”