VOA常速英语:Elderly Couples Demonstrate Benefits of Long Marriage

A happy marriage - or a permanent committed relationship - has long been associated with longevity and better health. Scientists say that's partly because healthier people are more likely to marry and stay married, and partly because of the health benefits, both physical and mental, that a loving, long-term relationship seems to confer. One European study published earlier this year in the Student British Medical Journal noted that mortality rates among married people were 10 to 15 percent lower than among unmarried individuals.

Each year, Brooklyn Borough president Marty Markowitz invites dozens of constituents in their 70s, 80s and 90s to attend an afternoon party at this country club. The only qualification: you have to have been married for at least fifty years. The couples - there were 400 this year - renew their vows and celebrate with a toast, and for some - with a dance.

Joe and Georgia Mark, who live in Brooklyn, met on a blind date in 1943, at another afternoon party, at a Chinese restaurant.

"And we danced through the whole thing," said Joe Mark.  "I didn't even eat the Chinese food. Jeez, we paid for something and didn't even eat it. This July, it'll be 67 years we're married. We're like the government. We plan ahead."

Now 88 and 85, they have raised two daughters and helped raise two grandsons, run a dry cleaning business, and survived Joe's bouts with cancer, and a heart attack.

"But you are a survivor, twice, thank God, because I won't let you die, no matter what," said Georgia Mark.

Georgia Mark could be right about her importance to her husband's health. Studies have found that married people have better physical and emotional health, in general, than single individuals. Deborah Carr, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University in New Jersey says that people who marry tend to be healthier to begin with, and then gain from having a partner who takes care of them.

"When couples love each other, they watch out for each other," said Carr.  "The wife will make her husband healthy meals and give him his medication, the husband will take the woman's arm as she is walking on a slippery ice patch. So there really are very direct things that husbands and wives do to protect each other's health, physically. And then perhaps the most important one is the emotional. Having someone you can talk to, having someone you can share your feelings with, that has very real effects for emotional health and physical health."

Professor Carr says that men who are married, in particular, tend to live longer. Both genders suffer from less depression. And not surprisingly, as married people age, they often argue less, and enjoy each other's company even more - like Joe and Georgia Mark, who 68 years after they met, say they are still each other's best friends.