Never giving up hope - George Raynes and Carol Harris wed 75 years after meeting in the first grade...

A man and woman from Saint John married on the weekend, 75 years after their first kiss.

George Raynes and Carol Harris, both 83, have known each other since they were in Grade 1, in 1936.

In Grade 3, they played the lead roles in their class production of Sleeping Beauty.

"I was sleeping beauty and he was my prince," Harris told CBC News.

Raynes says he wasn't supposed to actually kiss Harris during the play. "But the rascal that I was, I laid a big wet one on her. And she jumped up like a startled deer, you know," he said, chuckling at the memory.

"And actually, so she's the first girl I ever kissed."

Raynes moved to Ontario after he graduated from high school, and later married and raised a family.

But he kept in touch with Harris, who never married.

In June, months after his wife of 61 years died, Raynes drove to Saint John for what he called "a last look around."

"Thank goodness," said Harris, because the long-time friends soon fell in love and Raynes proposed on the deck of a romantic restaurant in Ontario.

'I can't help but think … that my prince from Grade 3 has finally come home to stay. And I think it's just marvellous.'- Carol Harris

"He will tell it differently than I. He will say he had sunstroke when he asked me," she said. "But he made an offer that he says I couldn't refuse, which was true actually.

"He suggested that we had had a great time and we had always been good friends and why don't we spend the rest of our lives together."

Harris didn't hesitate in saying, 'Yes.'

"I can't help but think … that my prince from Grade 3 has finally come home to stay. And I think it's just marvellous," she said.

Harris says Raynes came back into her life just as she had given up on the idea of ever tying the knot.

"There was a time when I thought I was going to be single forever," she said.

"When you get into your 80s and you're still alone, it begins to sink in that perhaps this is the way it's going to be until you pass away."

But the happy couple married on Saturday at the Lancaster Baptist Church in Saint John.