‘Pray’: Arkansas’ longest married couple share the secrets of love, life

“Pray,” Arwilda Whiteside said Thursday afternoon. “Know how to get on your knees, and get you a bible because that bible is going to have to take you through all kinds of storms.”

That’s the 98-year-old’s advice for lovebirds thinking about getting married soon.

Arwilda and her husband, 102-year-old Cleovis Whiteside, married in July 1939. Now, they’ve got 84 years of marriage under their belt.

The White Hall, Arkansas residents were honored Sunday by the nonprofit Arkansas Family Council for being the longest married couple in the state.

Traditional marriage and stable families are the foundation for any healthy society, the group’s governmental affairs liaison, Charisse Dean, said on Thursday.

“Children that grow up in healthy, stable, two-parent households do so much better,” she told USA TODAY. “Married people do better financially, they’re healthier, they live longer, and their mental health is better … We think it’s important to highlight this traditional family value of marriage, just to show how important it is for our society.”

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What is the Arkansas Family Council?

The Arkansas Family Council is a conservative Christian organization launched in 1989.  

The group works with local legislators and community members to promote values such as religious traditions, traditional marriage, protecting children and protecting life, Dean shared.

The nonprofit began its search for the longest married couple in 2018, asking community members to submit information for couples who have been married for at least 70 years. 

Previously, I.B. and Ima Jewel Williams took the top spot. When they passed away, the Whitesides became the nonprofit’s honorary couple.

How their love story began

Cleovis and Arwilda met when he was 13 and she was 9 years old. It happened “in the fork of a road,” Arwilda told USA TODAY Thursday afternoon.

Cleovis was with his uncle Elmo, who had a mental disability. His uncle would often approach young ladies and grab their hands, said the couple’s daughter, Kathy Whiteside-Sims.

Cleovis, who was taller, would often step in and tell him to let the girls go. 

One day, as Arwilda walked down the road, her friend told her to run to the taller boy, Cleovis, because he would protect her. When Arwilda ran to him, he knew he was going to marry her, he said.

He later saw her at a boxed supper event at church where girls and women made boxed meals for local boys and men to buy. 

“Daddy bought her boxed supper for 40 cents,” Whiteside-Sims shared.

The pair also went to school together, because at the time, children attended a one-room school. Some students were older and sharecroppers, so they didn’t attend all the time, Whiteside-Sims said.

They were married on July 24, 1939, when she was 13 and he was 17. 

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Life forced Cleovis and Awrilda to spend time apart as he left in the early 1940s for World War II. He returned home in 1945 and later went to study auto mechanics at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College.

Cleovis’ time away at school came as a shock since he traveled over 60 miles from Clarendon to Pine Bluff to sign up. He was instead told he had to start the same day, his daughter said.

“He wasn’t able to go back home to Clarendon,” Whiteside-Sims said. “It was a process of calling somebody to call somebody to go and tell somebody ‘I’m not coming home. I’m in school.’”

After finishing school, he got a job at the Pine Bluff Arsenal while Arwilda was a stay-at-home mom and housewife, their daughter said.

During their marriage, the pair undertook the challenge of raising 12 children of their own, in addition to providing other local children with a safe place to lay their heads, if needed. 

“Sometimes they had children that lived with them,” Dean, from the Arkansas Family Council, told USA TODAY Thursday. “They were just pillars in the community.”

Generosity is a huge part of what Arwilda loves about her husband, she said.

“He is always trying to help people,” she told USA TODAY.

And if you ask Cleovis to whittle down his love for his wife to one favorite thing, he simply can’t do it. 

Instead, he has a short but sweet response, “I love 99% of her.”