For Levittown couple, Valentine's Day marks 'beautiful love story'

On the first day of school at Massapequa High School, 15-year-old newcomer Barbara Kane was lost in the huge building. Fellow freshman Robert Kleber spotted her, and he immediately knew that was it — this was the girl he was going to marry.

A friend could only laugh.

“You don’t even know that girl,” Kleber recalled the friend telling him. “You won’t even get to first base with that girl.”

Kleber was undeterred. A few years later, the couple eloped.

On Wednesday, they celebrated Valentine's Day and 63 years of marriage by renewing their vows.

The Levittown residents were among 116 couples, including another husband and wife married 63 years, who took part in renewal ceremonies sponsored by the Town of Hempstead. Participants ranged from those married for just a year to a couple together for well over seven decades, though they couldn't make it in person because of the weather.

Hempstead Town Clerk Kate Murray presided over the event, which broke the town’s record for the number of couples participating since she started doing the ceremonies several years ago.

She initially planned for about 45 couples Wednesday — up from 32 last year — but so many responded to an invitation sent to households throughout the town that they expanded it to 116.

The couples, especially the ones married for decades, “are real role models in a day and age when a lot of marriages come and go,” Murray said. “It says something about their tenacity. … It’s something we can all learn from.”

The event was held at the Coral House catering hall and wedding venue in Baldwin, which donated lunch for the couples.

Barbara Kleber, 82, recalled that her father was not happy when she asked for his OK to get engaged to Robert. The end of high school was approaching and her future husband was about to enter the Army.

“My father said, ‘No, it’s not happening,’” she said. “He said, 'Think about it when he comes out of the military.'”

She didn’t want to wait and she didn't need to think about it — so they eloped in December 1960. A judge in Long Beach married them.

Robert Kleber, also 82, said waiting was not an option — the Army was about to send him to Germany.

“I was going overseas so I didn’t know when I would see her again,” he said.

Barbara’s father still wasn’t happy after the elopement, she recalled.

“He said, ‘Barbara, you made your bed, now lie in it.’”

Her new husband left for Germany shortly after they eloped, and she followed a few months later. Their first child was born in Germany.

They ended up having four children, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Barbara worked for years as a crossing guard. Robert was a bus driver for the MTA.

“It worked out, thank God,” Barbara said, adding that she has no regrets. “I’d do it again.”

Their oldest daughter, Kim McNulty, said the couple are an inspiration to the family.

“It’s a beautiful love story that started on Long Island and that’s been here forever,” she said.

Another couple at the event, Nan and John Gallo of Oceanside, said they met as teenagers at a popular candy shop in Rockville Centre in 1957. She attended St. Agnes Catholic High School; he attended Southside High School.

“We just saw each other and liked each other,” said Nan Gallo, 85.

They got engaged. By the time she was 21 and he had turned 20, they were married.

Because of John's age, they had to get his mother to come when they applied for the marriage license.

Nan “robbed the cradle,” John, 84, joked, adding that he had taken leave from the Navy to get married.

On Wednesday, they renewed their vows 63 years later. 

Asked their secret to staying married for so long, Nan said, “You fight a little, then you make up a little, you do a lot of things together.”