Widowed hospital volunteers in their 70s fall in love: “Man upstairs put us together for a reason”

It's never too late to find love. This widowed couple found their happily-ever-after at a party for hospital volunteers last year.

Ron Hill and Pat LoPresti both began volunteering at HCA Healthcare's Trident Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina, after losing their spouses, according to CBS News.

Hill, 73, began volunteering at the hospital on Wednesday, while LoPresti, 78 visited on Thursdays. Unfortunately, they were both furloughed during the first year of the pandemic. But the hospital invited the volunteers back in March 2021 and even threw them a welcome party, which is when their paths crossed for the first time. 

After the party, the two got a chance to talk after they were both put on shifts on Monday. "We discovered we both got transferred to Mondays and neither of us worked on a Monday before," LoPresti said. "You worked Monday morning and I worked Monday afternoon and we would both have lunch together."

LoPresti then revealed that the numerous lunches they actually had together helped them forge a bond. 

"Coincidentally, we had the same lunchtime, LoPresti told the hospital, according to PEOPLE. "We had a chance to get to know each other and learned a lot about each other. We found out we had like interests and we were like-minded people. And, it just created a spark between us."

Now, the two of them believe that it was God who got them together. "It's got to be the man upstairs who put us together for a reason," Hill said. And it seems that way because both of them were prepping to spend the rest of their lives alone before meeting each other. 

"We've talked about this and neither one of us thought about a future other than being alone the rest of our lives and enjoying our family and our volunteerism and friends. And, when this happened it was a surprise," LoPresti told the hospital. 

Recently, Hill decided to take his relationship with LoPresti to the next level. He proposed to her at the Middleton Place Gardens in Charleston, a hospital spokesperson said. 

Now the two are preparing for their wedding in October 2022.

"We never gave [dating] a thought," LoPresti said. "Here we were, both widows, thinking we were going to be OK if we were alone for the rest of our lives. We had friends, we had family, we had fellow volunteers. We were going to be OK."

"And then — surprise," she added, "we bumped into each other."