The Beatles said “all you need is love.” In “The Rose,” Bette Midler sang that it’s “an endless-aching need.”

As you get older and lose loved ones, family members, and friends, social opportunities and the pool of available singles can shrink, yet there is still a hunger for connection. Regardless of whether you’re 18 or 80, the search is never easy. Sometimes, you look for love in all the wrong places, and other times you find it right at your doorstep.

That’s what happened to Herman Cohn in 2011 when he rang the doorbell at Margot Eisenhammer’s Lincolnwood home. “We clicked from day one,” said Cohn, 94, during an interview at the couple’s Lincolnwood Place apartment.

“His friend knew I was a widow and suggested Herman look me up,” recalled Eisenhammer, 88, who hooked him with the first bite of a salad she prepared for him. “I knew he was coming, so I made herring salad, German style,” she said.

Nearly five years later, the flame is still burning. “We have a very good life together with some occasional fist fights,” Cohn jokes.

Cohn’s daughter Joyce Feuer, who lives in Hyde Park, has observed how their different tastes in film have sometimes sparked spirited debates. Eisenhammer favors quieter films like the current Brooklyn , while Herman gets fired up about war pictures.

Eisenhammer says their German-Jewish roots drew them together. Cohn, who was featured in a history channel documentary in 2015 for the 70 ^th anniversary of Dachau’s liberation, agrees: “Both of us left Germany as teenagers and had similar experiences of living in the U.S. trying to make a decent living.”

Both lost their spouses and decided not to marry again but live together blissfully, have mutual friends, and share an appreciation for family. Eisenhammer has grown fond of Cohn’s three children and Cohn has gotten to know her son and daughter.

Like an English Renaissance poet, Eisenhammer declares that it’s Cohn’s love for his family that she finds irresistible. “I’ve never come across a man who has this kind of love for his family. I find that so endearing in him. Isn’t that
right, Herman?”

“It goes both ways,” he says with a smile.

A long and winding road

It took Marvin & Beverly Grabow Rose of Evanston nearly 60 years to finally get together. They met each other as students in 1947 at a University of Chicago coffee shop but didn’t go on their first date until 1998.

They married other people, raised families, and were widowed around the same time. They ended up at a mutual friend’s slide show presentation of a China trip. A few months later, they met again during a Ghandi film screening at Northwestern University.

Marvin, 90, was gone for two months on a trip to Israel. Upon his return, he asked Bev, 86, to attend a Susan Sontag lecture with him. Bev accepted his invitation but insisted, “Oh, I’m not dating.” I told her, “Neither am I,” Marvin recalled with a chuckle.

For two people who weren’t dating, they became pretty inseparable. “We have emailed every night since,” said Bev.

Married for eight years, thes two snowbirds enjoy winters in Florida and appreciate each other’s differences. Marvin is an excellent cook, while Bev is a voracious reader and likes playing bridge.

Some say you can’t hurry love, and Marvin agrees. His advice: “Take things slow. You get to know the person so much better over time.”

Standing the test of time

At Hedy Ratner’s and Mort Kaplan’s sort-of commitment ceremony in 2011, Kaplan sang “Time after Time,” a 1984 love song, written by Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman, that captures the couple’s devotion through life’s ups and downs. (The two finally tied the knot on July 1, 2012).

They’ve supported each other on the road to professional success and to each other. Ratner, 70, is co-founder of the Women’s Business Development Center and Kaplan, 80, had a long career as a public relations consultant and is a Professor Emeritus of Columbia College in Chicago.

“Our love affair has lasted about 45 years, and it’s only grown stronger every year,” said Ratner. “Even in the worst of times, we’ve been able to make each other laugh.”

One example is the lengths to which Kaplan went to cheer up Ratner during a time of pain and loss. “When Hedy’s mother died, she was so depressed, and I was trying to figure out a way to cheer her up,” he recalled.

So he penned a love letter to her on a billboard at Chicago Avenue and Dearborn that said: “To Hedy, a parfait in a world of pound cake.”

Even though there were periods of separation in the early years, fate always stepped in. Ratner had been working for some months in D.C. when the two were reunited one Saturday night. Kaplan took his father to Chicago’s famous Pump Room, where Ratner also happened to be dining with her mother.

“We saw each other across the room, and it was spectacular,” Kaplan recalled.

You never know when your beshert will show up. So be ready!

Jennifer Brody is a former associate editor at JUF News and a freelance writer living in Chicago.