LEWISTON — They met online. Through happenstance. At clubs.

They got married right away, because why wait? Or they didn’t, because who needs to be married? Sometimes they knew almost instantly that the person sitting across from them was The One.

The One they wanted to grow older with.

For seniors in Maine — and in the oldest state in the union, there are a lot of seniors — it isn’t always easy to find love. But it’s pretty much always worth it, at least according to the people who have done it.

“I was happy, I was here, I had my grandchildren. I have a lot of female friends that I do things with. I do a lot of theater. . . . I was really fine. I just missed the male companionship kind of thing, though,” said 71-year-old Lindsey Walker, who met her beau online. “I feel my life is very, very full now. There’s nothing I need to add to it.”

With Valentine’s Day coming up, we talked to five couples about life, love and dating after a certain age. How did they meet? How is dating at 60-something different than dating at 20-something? What advice do they have for other seniors looking for love?

This is what they said.

Bruce Macomber, 81, and Pat Donohue, 86

They were listening to a singer perform at Indian Head Resort in New Hampshire, part of a senior club bus trip in 2015, when another senior sidled up to Bruce Macomber and gave him some advice.

“I wasn’t looking or thinking about dancing. At that point, I was kind of leery about asking anybody. I didn’t want to offend anybody, so I didn’t,” Macomber said. “But one of the ladies in the group said, ‘You should ask Pat to dance. She loves to dance.'”

He didn’t ask her, not on that trip. But they were both members of the same senior clubs and the knowledge stayed with him — Pat Donohue loves to dance. Not long after, when his friend’s band, The Veggies, booked a gig at Fusion Nightclub and Lounge in Lewiston, he asked if she wanted to go.

Yes, yes she did.

“From that day on, we’ve been following The Veggies. Now we go dancing every Friday and Saturday night,” he said. “We started out as friends going dancing. Then we were dance partners. Now we’re a couple.”

Or, as Donohue put it: “We travel wherever the music is.”

They’d both lost spouses — hers 11 years before they met, his less than a year before. Neither of them wanted to marry again, they agreed on that early on. They didn’t want to intertwine their finances the way a marriage does. And they didn’t want to lose their independence.

So they live separately, Macomber in New Gloucester, Donohue in Auburn. They talk over the phone every day, throughout the day, catching up with each other when they aren’t out with friends or busy with their own schedules.

“It just makes for a closeness, so you don’t feel like you’re alone in your apartment or your home,” Donohue said. “You have someone that you can talk to. It’s great.”

Weekends they go dancing at area clubs, where they’re always the oldest couple on the floor.

“No matter where we are, we dance,” Donohue said. “We go to Mixers. We go to Erik’s Church out in Windham. We go all over the place. We go to Jay. . . . Everybody sees we’re the oldest people in there. We’re up at every dance, and they just can’t believe it. ‘You are amazing,’ they say. ‘I hope when I get to be old I’ll be able to dance like that.’ Of course you can!”

They enjoy all bands but really prefer The Veggies. The others don’t play enough slow songs, which can be . . . bothersome. “It’s hard to be close, let’s put it that way,” Macomber said.

Four years after their first dance, he still likes that she’s caring, outgoing, fun.

“I just think she’s a cute little thing,” he said.

She likes that’s he’s a good dancer, easy to get along with, comfortable to be around. And it’s not a bad thing that he’s just 80 to her 86.

“I’m a cougar because, of course, I’m older than he is,” she said. “I have a laugh about that with the young ones. They don’t even think I know what a cougar is.”

To other seniors they have this advice: Find a good partner. Don’t try to rush a relationship. Communicate.

“I think at any age, women and men should try to get together to be happy,” Donohue said. “That’s what it all boils down to: It makes you happy.”

Lindsey Walker, 71, and Wayne Saucier, 69

When Lindsey Walker’s husband died in 2016, she figured that was it for her. They’d been married for 26 years. She never planned to have another relationship with a man.

A year later she met a retired university professor at their local community theater. He was gay, so romance wasn’t a question. They clicked as friends.

“He was just wonderful. We were doing things together, we would talk books and all that. It was just nice to have a male perspective on things,” Walker said. “I had missed that.”

When the retired professor moved away a year later, Walker came to a decision.

“I thought ‘I’m going to, just for the heck of it, try this Match.com business,'” she said.

It was, she said, “crazy” and “overwhelming.”

“Oh my god. You get this thing that’s like, ‘Here are 6,000 guys who want to meet you!’ You could spend your life going through all of these profile things,” Walker said. “So I was only on it for five days and then I just said stop it, I don’t want all these emails.”

And while most profiles seemed genuine, others felt absurd — like the man in his 80s or 90s, using oxygen in his cover photo, who insisted in his profile that he wanted to date a 27-year-old.

Ultimately, Walker chose five men she was interested in meeting. They were all very nice, it turned out, but most of them weren’t quite a match.

“Then I met Wayne,” she said.

They went for lunch at Chick-a-Dee in Lewiston — but only after Walker, mindful of the danger of meeting a stranger from the internet, had gathered all the information she knew about him, left it on her desk and told her daughter-in-law to look for that guy if she went missing.

“I told him at lunch that I had done that and I said, ‘So if you’re a serial killer, you need to find someone else,'” Walker said.

He was not.

But while Wayne Saucier was not a murderer, neither was he Walker’s usual type. He was a jock; she was academic. She was a foodie with 400 cookbooks; he liked to eat just a handful of foods.

Still, he was nice enough and they’d shared a few laughs. So when Saucier called the next day and asked her out to dinner, Walker said sure. She didn’t expect much to come from date no. 2.

He surprised her.

As she tells it: “I said (to him), ‘I was really nervous having lunch because I hadn’t had a date in like over 30 years, so I know I talked a lot. But I’m not as nervous tonight so I’m not talking as much.’ And he said, ‘Yes you are,'” Walker remembered. “I thought, ‘Oh, maybe there is some possibility with this person.’ Because I can’t stand smarmy guys.  You know, ‘Everything you do is wonderful and you’re beautiful’ and all this crap. He was just really a straight shooter. I love that.”

For their third date, Walker offered to cook him dinner. Saucier showed up 30 minutes early, a faux pas that could have been disastrous but ended up a blessing.

“So he comes in. I’ve got my sloppy clothes on. I’ve got tomato sauce all over me. I’ve showered and gotten clean, but I haven’t put my makeup on or taken the frizz out of my hair. . . . I said, ‘Just a minute’ and I flew into the bathroom. Then I came out and I said, ‘The heck with that. You’ve already seen it. If you’re still here, I’m just going to brush my hair back and serve dinner.’ Really, that was just a great breakthrough. That’s how our whole relationship has been. It has never felt like dating. It’s just always felt comfortable.”

Somewhere around that third date, he asked to kiss her. Sparks flew.

“I had just figured (sex) was a dead chapter in my life. The last few years my husband was sick and it just wasn’t a thing. I just wanted a companion, somebody to go to the movies with and stuff like that,” Walker said. “Then I kissed him and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s not dead.'”

A year-and-a-half later, Walker, 71, and Saucier, 69, are officially a couple. They enjoy each other’s families. They’ve adopted a dog together. She struggled with how to refer to him — “boyfriend” sounded too young, “partner” seemed wrong — until Christmas, when he gave her a “companion” ring featuring their birthstones and engraved with their names.

However, they don’t plan to get married. She has a home in Lewiston, he lives in Augusta. Their 30-minute door-to-door commute feels about perfect.

Her advice to other seniors: Be open minded.

“At first blush, it was ‘We have nothing in common.’ But then because we got into a relationship, we discovered we’re on the same page with religion. We’re on the same page with politics. We’re on the same page with ethics. Those are things that are important. What he eats is not important in comparison,” Walker said. “And I can have my Indian food on days that he’s not here.”

Peter van Oosten, 81, and Carolee Simeoni, 74

On May 1, 2018, Peter van Oosten and Carolee Simeoni sat across from each other at Cole Farms in Gray. As first dates go, this one was easy. They talked for hours. Sparks flew.

Within five months, they were living together.

“It was fast,” Simeoni said, “but it was right.”

He’d lost his second wife of nearly 20 years. She’d lost her husband of 52 years. Neither of them had dated in decades — she’d been all of 18 when she married. They both knew people who’d had good experiences with online dating, so they each signed up for OurTime.com, a dating site for people over 50.

It wasn’t an instant success for either of them.

“I wanted it to be the right program, the right connection with a more likely group of people, hence the older (age dating site). Even then you still find you get responses that were totally out of left field,” van Oosten said. “Twenty-six-year-olds want to date me? No, no, no. And they’re from California. Excuse me?”

Too many didn’t seem genuine or truthful. Then Simeoni’s profile popped up as a suggested match for van Oosten.

“When I connected with Carolee, there was an instant spark. This was a real person,” van Oosten said.

At their first date at Cole Farms, that spark only grew.

“We just had this connection. We clicked,” Simeoni said. “I’m not one that can talk to strangers really well. If they talk to me, I can talk back, but I’m a little bit of a shy person until I get to know somebody. But we just sat at Cole Farms and talked and talked and talked. It was just very easy and casual. When we both left there that day, we both decided we would like to see each other again.”

He fell for her openness and authenticity. She adored his Dutch-Australian accent and the ease of being with him.

Simeoni was living in Alfred at the time and thinking of moving to central Maine to be closer to her sisters. With van Oosten living in Greene, moving seemed like an even better idea.

Within months she had sold her house and moved in with him. There was no hesitation.

“I don’t have that many more years on the slate, so to speak. You do these things quickly, you know?” van Oosten said. “Once you feel it’s right, and we both did quickly, we had no issues.”

They’ve spent the past couple of years meeting each other’s family, traveling and spending quiet days at home playing backgammon, enjoying music or cooking.

“We have a great kitchen relationship,” van Oosten said. “We do not get in each other’s way.”

While they haven’t formally married, the two made sincere, personal promises to each other. They consider their relationship lifelong.

“There are financial reasons that we don’t have the piece of paper, and that’s fine with us,” Simeoni said.

Their advice to other seniors: Be honest with potential partners. Be real. Be clear about expectations.

And, maybe, choose the right dating site.

“One that has a focus,” van Oosten said. “For instance, in our case, the age group was important. That doesn’t give you total immunity from people who are obviously using it for their own purposes, these sites, but you soon wake up to that. Anyone in Utah who wants to date me in Maine, the flags go up.”

Vilene Farina, 66, and John Farina, 69

When John Farina’s wife got sick, they talked about what they would each do if the other one died. They’d met in college, had been married for 29 years. She was adamant about what she wanted for him.

“She said ‘Don’t sit home and mope and moan. Get out there,'” John said.

So a couple of months after she died in 2006, he began to consider dating. But he had no idea how people met other people these days.

“I don’t know how many people do the bar scene anymore,” he said with a laugh. “That time has gone by, I think.”

Then someone suggested online dating.

At the time, Yahoo offered a dating section. It seemed like a good place to start.

“I was on Yahoo and I saw a post by this woman who was a hypnotist and a reiki master. I said, ‘Wow, I know what hypnosis is but what the heck is reiki?’ I messaged her and we started messaging back and forth.”

That woman was Vilene. She’d divorced in 2000, was living in Auburn, and that Yahoo post was just her latest attempt at online dating. It hadn’t been going well.

“Eharmony, it took me forever to put the information in and then they only match you up with who they want to match you up with, you don’t get to see anybody else,” she said. “Because I put the hypnosis and the reiki in there, people were afraid.”

She’d tried different sites, went out on some dates. She’d grown skeptical about the whole thing.

“I met other people on there and they weren’t who they said they were,” she said. “They exaggerated.”

But John was exactly who he said he was — a widowed pharmacist living in Randolph, Maine. He was intrigued by her interest in hypnotism and reiki, not put off by it.

“That slid him up, right up to the top of the line,” Vilene said.

It also didn’t hurt that when she was sick with a stomach ailment, he suggested peppermint oil and calculated just the right amount to put in water to get a soothing scent. It worked.

“I’m like, ‘Talk about hoodoo-voodoo! This is magic!'” she said with a laugh.

For their first date, they met for lunch at Applebee’s in Auburn.

“We got the impression we were being thrown out about dinnertime,” John said. “We just sat there and just talked for the longest time, found out similarities we had growing up and in adult life and everything. It felt right. It clicked.”

They went to the Auburn Mall and walked around so they wouldn’t have to end the date.

“Then we set up another one and it just rolled on from there,” John said.

Initially, Vilene hadn’t been interested in marrying again. But they wanted to buy a home together and that would have mixed their finances. Marriage offered some financial protections for both of them.

They married in 2009, in a backyard ceremony officiated by a friend. They now live in Lewiston.

John has become a certified hypnotist and a reiki master, and they recently opened their own business, Vilene Wellness in Lewiston, offering hypnosis, reiki, essential oils and energy work. They also run AARP’s monthly Lewiston-Auburn “On-Tap” event, where older Mainers can get a free drink, meet and chat — fighting back the loneliness that too often affects seniors, particularly seniors who are retired and single.

“You could sit in a chair and watch TV and that would be your only companion,” Vilene said. “You could be very isolated. . . I feel like that goes a long way with people getting depressed and lack of energy.”

Their advice: While online dating worked for them in 2006, they aren’t so sure they’d recommend it. They suggest seniors get out and meet people. Volunteer. Take advantage of community events, like AARP’s regular coffee klatch and On-Tap gatherings.

Be open to a friendship as much as a relationship.

“Regardless of dating, you meet a lot of nice people,” Vilene said.

Janice Jones, 67, and Robert Godfrey, 65

They met two years ago at the Roak Block senior housing development in Auburn.

“He just spotted my eyes and I spotted his,” Janice Jones said. “He was downstairs . . . waiting for the mail, and I happened to go down a few times. We just kept eyeing each other.”

He was tall, neatly dressed in jeans and a polo shirt and seemed in good health. She was bubbly, seemed sweet.

Robert Godfrey was casually seeing someone else at the time. His interactions with Jones did not go unnoticed.

“We’d talk every chance we’d get, but you’ve got people around and they’re teasing us. ‘He likes you!’ ‘You like him!’ and stuff. Even though we’re grownups,” Jones said. “I figured we don’t have to talk in front of these people. We’re adults.”

So she invited him up to her apartment.

“He was a gentleman,” Jones said. “The only thing he did was hold my hand after a while.”

If they dated, Jones told him, she wanted to be the only one. He agreed. From then on, he called every day and went up to her apartment, where they’d spend time together.

She’d been married for 20 years and divorced for two. She never expected to be in a relationship again. The thought she was too old for anyone to be interested in her.

“Surprise! It happens at any age,” she said.

Godfrey had been married for 27 years and divorced a few years, too. Like Jones, he never thought he’d find someone else.

“I was wrong. It’s been so nice to be wrong,” he said. “I feel like I’m one of the luckiest guys out there. It’s awesome.”

Five months after they started dating, Godfrey proposed with a ring he picked out. Jones said yes.

They married a month later.

“I just love being around her. She’s just the sweetest lady,” Godfrey said. “I can’t believe she chose me. I just can’t believe it.”

Dating as a 60-something proved different from dating as a 20-something, in a good way. They didn’t have to build careers, raise children or deal with the other pressures of youth. They were more mature. They knew what they wanted. They didn’t feel the need to play games.

“It’s just refreshing,” Godfrey said. “I get up in the morning and I feel like I’m starting over again, and I mean that in a really, really positive sense.”

Their advice to other seniors looking for love: Be honest about wants and needs. Be patient. Persevere.

“For me, I found a chance, so I kept going,” Godfrey said.

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