JEFFERSON TWP — Carol Oliver and Robert Kaltenhauser didn't have far to go to get married last weekend.

For their April 7 nuptials the two just went to the chapel around the corner.

Around the corner, that is, from their rooms in Haven 3 at Concordia Lutheran Ministries, 134 Marwood Road.

The two over-85-year-olds (“We are senior senior citizens,” said Oliver) exchanged vows in front of a crowd of nearly 100 made up of children, grandchildren, other relatives and members of the Concordia Alleluia Chorale.

Oliver and Kaltenhauser both credit the chorale with bringing them together.

“We didn't know each other before he moved in here,” said Oliver who writes and directs the chorale's Easter and Christmas cantatas.

They live across the hall from each other, she in 3121 and he in 3124.

“I've been here for seven and a half years and he moved in two and a half years ago,” Oliver said.

Kaltenhauser said, “I've sung in choirs since I was 15 years old. I sang in the St. Luke's Lutheran (in Saxonburg) choir as a baritone beginning in 1957.”

He said he wanted to keep singing and asked his neighbor, Oliver, about joining the chorale.

“It really did start with that,” she said. “ He wanted to be a member of the choir. I remember taking him a choir book.”

The 30 members of the chorale practice extensively before their Christmas and Easter cantata performances which meant Oliver and Kaltenhauser began spending a lot of time together.

“That's how we first met, really,” she said. “He presented my ring on Valentine's Day.

“I knew that our friendship was there. I didn't know if it (the proposal) was a surprise, but I guess it was,” said Oliver.

Plus, they agreed, living in Concordia has its advantages romance-wise.

“Concordia has a lot of activities and Concordia makes dating really easy,” she said.

“Neither one of us was thinking of getting married again. It was just a slow building of our friendship,” said Oliver, who has been married twice before.

After having seen her late husband through a long illness, Oliver said, “I was kind of looking forward to independence.” But fate and a baritone had other plans.

But their engagement didn't cut Kaltenhauser any slack with Oliver when it came to practicing for the chorale's Easter cantata.

“She's still a tough taskmaster,” he said.

Oliver said she should be tough, having been a piano teacher and choir master for 40 years.

She's also written 15 cantatas since moving to Haven 3.

Oliver said, “I took a course with Norma Laughner where you take an Old Testament story to make into a play. The audience really responded.”

“I choose pre-existing music to match to the narrative. I choose songs that are going to be meaningful to the audience,” she said.

Each cantata lasts 50 minutes to an hour.

The musical theme carried over with the wedding ceremony participants.

Oliver's grandson, Nick Capone, was the pianist and Oliver's daughter, Lyn Miller, and Kaltenhauser's daughter, Gretchen Kurzawa, sang during the ceremony.

The groom himself is scheduled to give a rendition of “One Hand, One Heart” during the ceremony.

The 4 p.m. ceremony was open only to invited guests and family, the bride and groom said, simply because they were running out of room in the chapel

Oliver said, “We invited the members of the Chorale. We consider them our Concordia family.”

But every resident of Haven 3 was invited to the reception in the building's dining hall from 5 to 6:30 p.m. April 7.

After Kaltenhauser moves across the hall into Oliver's apartment, the newlyweds plan to fly to Venice for three days before boarding an ocean liner to cruise down the east coast of the Adriatic Sea before sailing among the Greek isles.