From now on every Thursday we will post a portrait of a grandpa / grandma. Our first TBT is about a love story.

“At that time, I just had to walk down the street to find love”

Charlotte told us a nice « old is cool » love story she got from her grandma!

Yesterday, a friend advised me to download Tinder. Or, at least, I should try Once, she said.

I’m 23 and still unmarried. Probably the main reason my grandmother worries so much about my romantic life. But this time I decided to turn the question upside down: so, how did she manage to find her “great love”?

First you have to know that my grandmother has been married with the same man (my grandfather) for 53 years. A man she actually met on the street.

And here the story is… !

After the war, at 17, she was more or less penniless. Without money but not without style, she did not left my grandpa indifferent.

My grandmother and my mother when she was 17 (apparently style is hereditary in my family)

Let’s rock the 80s!

As she walked down the main street of Hyères, a small city in the Provence, he just asked her out. Just like this. Face to face. Straight to the point. And she remembers it as if it was yesterday.

Even if she was young, she was not naïve and, you can imagine why, she lied to him. But my grandpa was not stupid either, a quality she always liked about him, and decided not to go to this fake “rendez-vous”. Instead, he went to the cinema.

And never was a ticket better sold! At the intermission – yes back in the 50s they had intermissions at the middle of the films – he saw my grandmother. And, well, he bought her some candies. There is a French saying that in order to keep a man you have to take care of his stomach. Let’s say that my grandfather used the very same trick to win my grandmother’s heart.

So maybe I won’t download Tinder or sign up for Meetic. Instead, I will try the old-fashion-way and speak to some strangers (let’s just pray they won’t be psychopaths who will try to kill me…). Because, at the end, old is cool!

And yes they are still living in Hyères…

And you? Do you have any idea how your grandparents met? Go ask them and leave us a comment or send us the story with a portrait of them!