After the Aisle: Falling in Love Again

The scene is one out of a movie. It’s 1960, and from across a fraternity rush party dance floor in the Western North Carolina mountains, one first-year Furman student catches the eye of another. He was a day student from Greenville, South Carolina. She was a young woman from just around the corner in Black Mountain, North Carolina, who was looking to learn, make friends and get started on life away from home.

The young man, Mike Stevenson ’64, walked up to the young woman, Toni Taylor Robinson ’64, and held out his hand, asking for a dance.

“She didn’t know me, and I didn’t really know anyone,” Mike says. “But I thought she was cute, and my eyes kept following her around the room, so I knew I had to ask.”

Mike Stevenson ’64 and Toni Robinson ’64 at Furman.

The next two years were a whirlwind. Mike and Toni continued to see each other. They met each other’s parents. Mike even gave Toni his fraternity pin, a sign of a relationship taking a big next step. Everything was set up for nuptials and children and growing old together. And it would all happen for both – just not with each other.

“I broke us up because I had no job and no money and I guess I just wasn’t ready,” Mike says. “I still feel terrible about that to this day.”

Mike and Toni barely saw each other after that. Toni would meet and fall in love with her husband of more than 50 years, John “Skip” Robinson ’64. Mike met his wife, Susan, at a summer camp where they both had worked, leading to a joyful marriage of more than 50 years. Both had children. Both had grandchildren. Both enjoyed full, happy lives as teachers, office workers and principals at schools, as well as spouses, parents and grandparents.

Fast forward almost 60 years and their lives began to change. Toni’s husband died in 2015, and she was adjusting to life without him. Mike was adjusting to serving as Susan’s caregiver during the late stages of her dementia. Mike and Susan moved to Givens Highland Farms, a Black Mountain retirement community, in 2019, and Susan was admitted to the skilled care facility there a short time later. He recalls balancing a lot of emotions and memories at that time, some of which revolved around another time in the North Carolina mountains when he reached out his hand for a dance.

By 2023, he decided to reach out to Toni one more time.

“Several years after Skip passed away, I received this forwarded letter from Mike,” Toni says. “I recognized the name right away, of course, and I had to sit down. It had been almost 40 years since we had heard from each other.”

Mike explained that he was living in Highland Farms and that his wife was being treated for dementia. He spoke of his visit with Toni and Skip in the early ’80s and a bit of what had been going on these past 40 years. Toni says she took all that in and found herself nostalgic. Not only was it around her childhood home, but her parents lived at Highland Farms during their retirement. Mike and Toni communicated over time and eventually Toni made the decision to move from High Point, North Carolina, back to Black Mountain and into the same retirement community.

Both widowed by early 2024, Mike and Toni are starting the next chapter of their lives in much the same way they started their Furman romance. They spend most days together, traveling to visit with their respective families and talking about their 60 years apart. Next, the two plan to be married this summer.

“We both had such wonderful lives apart,” Toni says, “but to be able to come back together at the age of 82 is wonderful as well. We are relatively healthy; we still want to travel, and we have many more adventures to experience.”

“It really feels like a movie, sometimes,” Mike continues. “We just don’t know the ending yet.”