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" In a recent issue, REDBOOK asked readers to tell us their love stories, and you delivered, big time. This sweet tale is one of our 10 favorites. Get some tissues and read on!     My husband David and I celebrated our forty-second wedding anniversary on February 26, 2014. When we got married, we were two young hippie kids who most people thought wouldn&amp;#039;t last. He was 24 with long hair and a goatee. I wore bell bottoms and moccasins...and was 15! Now, here we are with three fully-grown, successful children, who have little ones of their own.  In 1983, after working incredibly hard, we were finally able to buy a little farm to raise a family. We built a few greenhouses and started growing plants and vegetables. For extra money, David built outdoor furniture, and I cleaned offices and houses. Then, one morning in June 1992, David felt some numbness on the side of his face. He also had some gradual hearing loss, which he shrugged off for several months. After seeing local doctors and getting misdiagnosed, we found our way to a neurologist in Philadelphia who immediately found a very large brain tumor\u2014an acoustic neuroma\u2014embedded in David&amp;#039;s brain stem. On September 11, 1992, after 12 hours in surgery, they successfully removed the tumor. When David was well enough to come home, the doctors said at that time there was no prescribed rehab, just hope for the best. The tumor left him permanently deaf in his left ear, his eye was paralyzed open, some of his saliva glands didn&amp;#039;t work, he had vertigo, and he was in a wheelchair. But he was alive! I could have placed him in a nursing facility, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t even think of that possibility, so home he came to our farm. After spending so much time at the hospital, I came home to a fall mum crop that was dead in the field, and everything in the greenhouses a complete loss. Up until this time, we were the normal middle class working family. We had a little savings put aside, our oldest had just started college, and life was good. But with David&amp;#039;s illness, we used up most of our savings in a short amount of time. And by January 1993, our farm was in foreclosure. I didn&amp;#039;t know where to turn. Word of our predicament somehow got out, and before I knew it, our kids&amp;#039; bus driver was at my door asking if she could help. With tears in both of our eyes, I hugged her, not saying really anything, but she took it from there. By that February, our family members, friends, local fire fighters, school bus drivers, and the entire community organized a fundraiser that raised five thousand dollars and saved our farm for us. All given in love, and some by people we didn&amp;#039;t even know! I can&amp;#039;t begin to tell you our gratitude\u2014even to this day. I remember every face, every check, every tear. It took almost a year, but David did recover for the most part. When he was strong enough, he asked me to push him down to the greenhouses. He would get himself out of the wheelchair and stand between the benches. After awhile, he regained some balance, then used a walker, then a cane, and in a few months, he was walking without assistance. He was using horticultural therapy to heal himself. We wanted to give back and aid others the way we were helped in our time of need. So we started helping people with physical and emotional challenges through horticultural therapy. In 2000, we founded The Growing Center, a non-profit horticultural therapy center. We have since helped thousands, without charging a fee to anyone. We have faced many other life altering events since then. Our middle daughter fought and won a battle with non Hodgkin&amp;#039;s Lymphoma, and a few years later was also diagnosed with a brain tumor\u2014no connection to the type her Dad had, just a crazy coincidence. She thankfully survived and is recovering. We have had many peaks and valleys in our lives, and we are still that hippie couple at heart. We are still head-over-heels in love with each other and fall asleep every night holding hands. We love growing old together, we have somehow come full circle to being a couple again, having time for us and seeing a glimpse of that young couple who fell in love in 1971. It only gets better and better. Our love story winners won a date night out: a $25 gift card to Fandango, where you can watch movie trailers, check showtimes, and buy tickets; and a $50 gift card to use either at Olive Garden, which serves fresh Italian food ranging from pasta classics to lighter fare, or LongHorn Steakhouse, which offers a wide variety of fresh, never frozen steaks. Also, from July 3 through 6, you can call 855-LH-GRILL to get grilling tips from a certified LongHorn Steakhouse Grill Master. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/a17865/linda-boyer-love-story/>