Skokie Couple Dies 40 Minutes Apart After 69-Year Marriage

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — After nearly seven decades of marriage, a Skokie couple passed away holding hands within less than an hour of other Saturday. Teresa Vatkin, 89, and her husband Isaac, 91, both raised in Argentina, were remembered at a memorial Monday in Arlington Heights.

The two settled in Skokie and raised three children as Isaac ran his own kosher meat distribution business and Teresa worked as a manicurist. After his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Isaac taught himself how to use a computer to research the disease and possible treatments, the Daily Herald reports.

As her health declined for more than a decade, Isaac continued to care for his beloved wife, feeding, bathing, clothing her and enrolling her in research trials at the Mayo Clinic. After he was no longer able to lift her, he consented to arrange for Teresa to enter an assisted living facility, relatives told the Sun-Times.

"Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other," said Clara Gesklin, the couple's daughter, at the joint funeral service at Shalom Memorial Funeral Home, according to the Daily Herald.

Although they both grew up in Argentina, Teresa was from Mar Del Plata, which was an eight-hour drive from Isaac's home in Buenos Aires, where he worked as a leathermaker, so their courtship mainly took place via letters, the Sun-Times reports.

The couple was married in 1947 before moving to Chicago in 1968 to join Isaac's siblings. They settled in Skokie, joined Congregation Kol Emeth and began investing in rental real estate. Isaac began his meat business after buying a refrigeration truck from Phil's Kosher Meats and brought meat from Chicago slaughterhouses across the North Shore and North Side of the city, according to the Sun-Times.

As the pair took their final breaths last weekend at Highland Park Hospital, the Daily Herald reported staff and family members brought them into the same room, put their beds beside one another and positioned their hands together.

» Read more from Shalom Memorial Funeral Home, The Daily Herald and The Chicago Sun Times

Photos courtesy Howard Handler