Percy Arrowsmith (13 March 1900 – 15 June 2005) and Florence "Flo" Arrowsmith (31 October 1904 – 9 April 2007) were, until Percy's death, a long time married couple residing in

Hereford Hereford () is a cathedral city, civil parish and the county town of Herefordshire, England. It lies on the River Wye, approximately east of the border with Wales, south-west of Worcester and north-west of Gloucester. With a population ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Life

On 1 June 2005, they erroneously made it into ''

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

'' for the longest marriage for a living couple and the oldest aggregate age of a married couple. They had been married for 80 years, having married in Hereford in 1925, three years after they met. However, the ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

'' newspaper revealed that one couple in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

was even older together and married for a longer time than the Arrowsmiths: André Léon Alphonse Debry (15 June 1898 - 31 August 2005) and Marguerite Pingaud (10 October 1903 - January 2006) wed on 12 August 1924 and celebrated their 81st wedding anniversary in August 2005 shortly before the husband's death. Percy died only exactly two weeks later on at age 105 and Florence followed almost two years afterwards at age 102.

Sources

CBS News: Couple Celebrates 80th AnniversaryBBC obituary for Percy Arrowsmith
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arrowsmith, Percy and Florence English centenarians Married couples