Doting couple eat a crumb of their 49-year-old wedding cake to celebrate anniversary every year
If you didn't know, several newlywed couples follow a longstanding tradition to freeze the top tier of their wedding cake and eat a slice on their one-year anniversary.
However, one West Grove, Pennsylvania couple took it a step further, the New York Post reports.
David and Anne Cowburn have enjoyed a slice - rather, a crumb - of their wedding cake on every anniversary for the past 49 years of their marriage.
Stunningly, the pastry has survived five house moves while being frozen in the freezer for almost half a century. On July 18 every year, the Cowburns thaw a small piece to share between them and cherish their holy union.
“It’s just a fun, romantic thing that we do,” 74-year-old Anne Cowburn told The Post.
The pair have three children and four grandchildren together. They recently reminisced their 1970 wedding, when they first cut into the three-tiered vanilla dessert.
“It was a very special cake,” Anne said of the white-frosting flowers and silver-leaf accents decorating the confection. “And there was so much of it.”
That said, the couple is lucky neither fell sick after eating the cake. “It’s neither plentiful nor toxic," 75-year-old David Cowburn, a retired educational administrator, told The Post.
Anne and David first met in 1967 while working as teachers at a junior high school in Wayne, Pennsylvania. They started dating about a year later and tied the knot two years after in a ceremony attended by 125 guests in Wilmington, Delaware.
The top tier of the 4-by-5 inch exclusive delicacy was saved by Anne's mother and later presented to the couple after they returned from their honeymoon in England.
“Our first anniversary, we ate quite a lot,” Anne reminisced.
According to The Post, they got the idea to preserve the cake from an old TV game show “I’ve Got A Secret,” hosted by Garry Moore. Panelists on the show had to guess their contestants' secrets when one participating couple revealed, “We’re going to eat the last piece of our wedding cake tonight. It’s 25 years old.”
“That episode must have embedded into my memory,” said David.
The couple, still madly in love after 49 years, now plans to bake the last remaining crumbs into a new cake to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year.