It was New Year’s Eve of 1948 in a blue-collar Ohio town on the shore of Lake Erie when Vincenza Nagy and Dean Cecil first fell in love.
“Vincy” was a shy 13-year-old in a yellow lace dress, dragged by her older sisters to the party that night in Lorain. Overwhelmed by all the drinking and kissing around her, Vincy scoped out a vacant corner and plopped herself down to hide.
“I suddenly saw a tall and gorgeous reddish-blond-haired boy come into the living room and he stopped and looked at me,” Vincy recalled.
“Then he walked over, pulled me up out of that corner and gave me my first kiss,” she said, still giggling at the thought 68 years later.
From that moment, Dean, who was 15, and Vincy were inseparable.
They did everything together, including “necking too much” on the beach and spending nights sipping coffee in Vincy’s living room.
But their love story ended prematurely in 1952 when Dean was drafted into the Korean War. He was 18.
“We were so sure of our relationship,” Vincy explained. But the time apart was too hard and too long.
Vincy was introduced to Robert Nagy. “Bob was invited to sing at Christmastime at our church and he had the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard,” she said.
They started dating even though Dean had written her a letter saying he had bought her a ring.
“Then one day when I was with Bob, I heard a knock at the door,” she said.
It was Dean.
Dean had gotten Vincy’s name tattooed on his arm while he was in the military.“I answered it and said, ‘Dean, we have to go now. This is Bob and we have an appointment, so I’ll see you around.’ I hated myself for saying that for many years,” she explained.
Vincy and Bob were married a year later, in 1954. Soon after, Bob joined the Metropolitan Opera as a tenor. The couple moved to Long Island and raised three children, Bobby, Helen and Gina.
They returned in 1987 to Lorain, where Bob died of heart disease in 2008.
A year later, Dean called. He had never forgotten about her. Though he had been married twice, Dean still thought about Vincy all the time — especially since he had gotten her name tattooed on his arm while he was in the military without telling her.
“My love for him was latent in my heart, but when I finally heard his voice it all popped up,” Vincy said. “If you truly love someone, you don’t have to see them for 25 or even 100 years, but if you truly love them your love will be stronger than ever.”
At ages 74 and 76, Vincy and Dean fell head-over-heels again.
“We carried that love in our hearts for 56 years,” she said.
In 2010, the sweethearts packed up and spent the next four years crisscrossing America in a white Chevy pickup truck.
The lovebirds lived a life of adventure until Dean started to show significant signs of Parkinson’s disease in 2014. But Vincy fancies Dean just the same.
“I shower him with kisses and still think he’s the most handsome man in the world,” she said. “Dean and I really are a testament to how true love never dies.”
Dean, meanwhile, never really spoke to Vincy about their time apart. It was always unspoken that he never got over her. But with this Valentine’s Day approaching, he recently pulled her close and for the first time said aloud, “Vincy, I love you. You have always been the one.”
