The wrinkled paper is yellow with age, like some ancient parchment. The letterhead is partly torn off. The text--scribbled with an old-style fountain pen so that the end of each sentence is much fainter than its beginning--is hard to make out. The date reads September 9, 1924.

It looks as if someone took this page, crumpled it up, and threw it away, and as if someone else took it out of the garbage and smoothed it out--which is exactly what happened.

There is a love story behind this timeworn document--a story of devotion, commitment and family. Drafted by my grandfather nearly seven decades ago, the letter asked his future father-in-law for my grandmother's hand in marriage.

My grandparents had been courting for several months, and my grandfather thought the time was right. He showed my grandmother what he had written.

She laughed. Then she crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage.

"I didn't want to marry him," she used to say. "I thought he was ugly."

"But he wouldn't leave me alone."

Then she would smile and take his hand, and he would smile back.

"He's gotten handsomer over the years, don't you think?" she would ask.

And so it was that my Opa and Omi were married. She was 19, just out of school. He was 29, just starting up a medical practice.

I have a picture of them standing side by side on their wedding day, Opa in his tux, Omi in her flowing white gown.

And I have a picture of them taken just a few years ago, shortly before Opa died. They are standing side by side, smiling, the way I will always think of them.

For the 66 years of their marriage, they were always side by side. When Omi would disappear somewhere for just a minute, Opa would wonder where she was.

I have a distant cousin who was married for 24 hours. For my grandparents, 24 hours was about as long as they were ever apart.

In an age when marriages are often shorter than the divorce proceedings that follow, their devotion to each other was remarkable.