After promising to marry each other if they were single at 50, high school sweethearts tie the knot

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published 7 June 2018

It started off as a joke, but ended with a marriage.

Kimberley Dean, 51, and Ron Palmer, 54, briefly dated while attending Saint Agnes School in Minnesota more than 35 years ago. Although their high school romance was brief, their friendship wasn't — they kept in touch, even as they both married and divorced other people. Dean and Palmer said they never went more than six months without talking, and during one conversation in their 30s, they jokingly agreed that if they were single by the time they were both over 50, they'd marry each other.

In 2016, Dean reminded Palmer of their long-ago promise. He worried that a romantic relationship might not work out and their friendship would be ruined, but "I could see we still had feelings for each other," he told People. "And it's been fantastic ever since." Palmer proposed on New Year's Eve 2017, and the couple married on June 1. "We're very comfortable around each other," Dean said. "We do the complete sentences and laugh at each other's stupid jokes kind of thing. We're kind of like a yin and a yang."

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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.

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