Dena Samitz Bloom and J. Marvin Bloom of Lafayette Hill created a legacy of love, writes Kellie Patrick Gates for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Their story started in 1955 when Dena’s brother’s girlfriend played matchmaker. One day on the bus she gave Marvin a note about Dena before he got off the bus at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry.

After showing the note to his mom, he gave Dena a call. They had their first date at Hot Shoppes at Broad and Godfrey.

Dena recalls, “I was more nervous than he was, and he was pretty nervous.”

She added, “He was cute, he was smart, he was kind.”

They got married in 1957 and raised two daughters and a son together. Their first home was in Plymouth Meeting. Then after many years in their Lafayette Hill home, they downsized to a townhouse in Blue Bell.

Their children were everything to them. Dena said, “Every game they played in, every concert they sang in, we were there. We used to rent an RV. We went throughout the whole West, all the way to California and all the national parks.”

Dena and Marvin also always made time for each other too all the way up to his death in 2014 from cancer. Dena said that the continued growth of her family without her husband has been bittersweet.

Read more of their love story in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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