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The duo say they aren’t really sure who started the tradition, but they’re always excited to get the card.
SAN FRANCISCO — Two best friends who met in the 1940s have exchanged the same birthday card every year for the last 80 years.
Pat DeReamer, who just turned 95, and Mary Kroger, who is turning 95 in May, told Washington Post the tradition started when they were 14 years old. It’s when they first met – shortly after DeReamer and her family moved to Indianapolis in 1942.
“I was certainly a misfit,” DeReamer said. “Mary took me under her wing… We became very good friends.”
At the time they lived a mere three blocks apart, she added.
Six decades into exchanging the same card every year, the duo won the Guinness World Record for “Longest Greetings Card Exchange.” The record now belongs to two Australian friends who have been exchanging their card for 61 years. In November, they applied to reclaim the title and are waiting to hear back, according to the Washington Post.
The possibly record-breaking, decades-old card has a cartoon dog with a large red and black polka-dot bow tie on the front. It reads: “Here’s wishing you a BIRTHDAY that really is COLOSSAL.” On the inside of the card, there’s a skeleton of a large dinosaur and the same dog from the front. It reads: “’Cause it’ll be a long, long time before YOU’RE an old fossil!”
The duo told the Washington Post they aren’t really sure who started the tradition, but they’re always excited to get the card.
“The joke is that neither one of us knows who started the card,” Kroger said.
“We don’t know why it kept going back and forth,” DeReamer said. “It just happened.”
DeReamer gets the card first, on her April 1 birthday, then signs it and mails it back to Wheaton, so she can open it on her May 20 birthday. Kroger now lives in Carmel, Indiana, and DeReamer lives in Louisville, Kentucky, according to the Washington Post.
Despite their distance, they keep this tradition alive.
They told the Washington Post they now only sign their names and the date on the card, but include separate notes in an oversized envelope to one another.
As the two approach becoming centenarians, they say they’ll continue the tradition as long as possible, but are open to letting their families take over at some point.
