‘I didn’t think I’d find love again after I was widowed – but I met my second husband on Facebook aged 69’

A 76-year-old woman who lost her husband of over four decades to cancer said she “didn’t think love would ever happen” to her again, before she met her second husband via a Facebook group.

Janice Crombie-Scott, a former childminder who lives at the Mayfield Retirement Village in West Watford, Hertfordshire was devastated after her husband, Russell Crombie, died of pancreatic cancer on February 15 2012.

In September 2019, Janice said she came across a Facebook post via a group called Jewish Socialites, written by a man named Anthony Scott-Norman who said he had had a lot of “bad dates” and was “totally fed up with women taking him for a ride”.

Janice said she replied that Anthony shouldn’t “tar all women with the same brush” and then she challenged him to meet her. They swapped numbers and began messaging.

Within two years, the couple were engaged and then married on July 31, 2022, both at the age of 72.

Janice told PA Real Life: “I think Anthony was dying to find love again.

“But I wasn’t so sure that a man would be capable of loving me at my age, even though I still colour my hair and try to be as attractive as I can.

“I just wanted to be loved again and that’s what Anthony gives me. He loves me to bits,” she added.

Looking back on her first marriage, Janice said she met Russell aged 15 in the mid-1960s when he worked for her father, and she immediately thought he was “gorgeous”.

The pair got engaged in 1967 and Janice’s mother insisted on a long engagement “just in case” it didn’t work out. They married on September 27, 1970 and had four children throughout the 1970s – Anna, Natasha, Philippa, and Oliver.

“It was a love marriage,” Janice said. “So it was just terrific.”

Everything changed in 2010, when Janice said Russell suddenly started to feel “very uncomfortable” so he went to his GP with “discomfort in his stomach”.

A year of investigations followed, but Janice said doctors “couldn’t find anything” until his brother-in-law – who was a GP – encouraged him to have an MRI at his private practice in Chelmsford, which is how he was diagnosed with “raging” pancreatic cancer in 2011.

Russell underwent treatment and had surgery to remove the cancer, but Janice said later scans showed that it had spread. His condition worsened to the point he was in “agonising pain”, so he moved into the Peace Hospice in Watford before he died on February 15 2012, aged 65.

In the years since, Janice said: “I wasn’t even thinking about love. I was so bereft that the only thing I could think about was watching the TV all day long to take my mind off things.”

It was September 2019 when Janice came across the Facebook post from Manchester-based Anthony. She said she looked at his profile picture and thought: “He looks alright!”

After they started chatting, Janice said they “got along very well” and “just clicked” so they progressed from messaging to FaceTiming each other.

It’s through these initial conversations that Janice found out Anthony was also a widow, after losing his wife of 43 years to cancer in 2017.

By the end of October, Janice invited Anthony to a group coffee meet-up at her local library in Watford, before he planned to visit a cemetery in Willesden about half-an-hour’s drive away to try to trace some of his family history.

Anthony had thought to get a bus there, but Janice said it was “horrendously torrentially raining” that day so she offered to drive him and wait in the car while she read a book.

That’s how they ended up spending their first date at a cemetery, before Janice drove Anthony back to his hotel. The next evening, they had a meal and did a quiz together at a local pub, and the following night Janice cooked Anthony a Friday night dinner.

Over the next few months, the pair took turns travelling across England to spend time together, before Anthony moved in with Janice just before the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.

On what it was like being in lockdown together, Janice said: “He was a Scrabble player and I was a Rummikub player. Every sunny afternoon we did Rummikub first, then I made an afternoon tea with cake and tea, and then afterwards we played Scrabble.

“Then the next day we alternated it. And we had such fun in my old garden.

“We just got on so well.”

It was during a sunny afternoon full of these games in September 2020 that Anthony proposed to Janice.

She said: “He started going down on one knee, so I quickly grabbed the towel that was keeping the sun off the radio and put it on the ground so he had something to kneel on.

“Then he proposed to me. And I said yes,” she added.

The couple decided to wait until there were no Covid-19 restrictions to have the wedding, so it was planned for July 31 2022 at the Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue (now The Ark Synagogue).

Janice said her son Oliver walked her down the aisle during a “very hot summer day” before she and Anthony got married under a Chuppah. As for the reception, the pair booked out the Blue Check restaurant in Bushey for 70 people, before guests were treated to a Latin keyboardist and a magician.

The couple honeymooned on a three-week cruise stopping in the Italian cities of Ravenna and Venice, as well as Dubrovnik in Croatia and some of the surrounding islands.

They then moved into the Mayfield Retirement Village in West Watford together, and Janice has described their marriage as “wonderful”.

“He actually broke down the other day,” Janice said.

“The other evening, he’d been watching something on TV about a partner dying before the other one, so he came to me and cuddled me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘I don’t want you to go before me’.

“So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want you to go before me’.”

Reflecting on what life was like as a widow before she met Anthony, Janice said: “I always said to friends who asked if I would ever marry again that the only criteria is for sheer love.

“So I’m very lucky to have found it.”