Couple pressured to break up decades ago gets a 2nd chance at love

Decades after she broke up with him, Jeanne Gustavson tracked down her first love, Steve Watts — and this time, she's not letting him go.

Gustavson and Watts met in the early 1970s, when they both were part of the German Club at Chicago's Loyola University. They started dating, but Gustavson, who is white, said her mother was "livid" over her being in a relationship with a Black man. She was pressured into breaking up with Watts, a move she instantly regretted. "I can't turn back the clock," Gustavson told CBS News. "I wish I could. I would have married him."

She never stopped wondering what happened to Watts, and last year, decided it was time to find him. She discovered he was living at a nursing home in Chicago, and like her, had been married, got divorced, and didn't have any children. His life had also taken a hard turn — Watts experienced homelessness, and was in the nursing home after suffering two strokes.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

He was still "the wonderful, gorgeous man that I knew," Gustavson said, and with their romance rekindled, she arranged for Watts to be moved to her home in Portland, Oregon, where she can serve as his full-time caretaker. Watts was thinking about Gustavson for all these years, too — "I always loved her," he said — and both are grateful to be back in each other's lives. "We both get a second chance," Gustavson said.

Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.