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"Love is lovelier," goes the old song, "the second time around."

Bill and Pat Walsh of Our Lady of Victory parish in Troy are living that lyric. After each lost a spouse, they found each other - through the internet.

"I had WebTV, hit a button and landed on [a website called] 'Catholic Singles,'" Mrs. Walsh recalled. "I didn't know what I was doing. I thought sites like that were for younger people and I was too old.

"But they had a special: three months at no charge. So, I went looking for a nice gentleman in this area to take me out to dinner or a movie - and then say, 'Good night.'"

Mrs. Walsh, a native of Binghamton, earned a nursing degree at The College of Saint Rose in Albany and took a job at St. Mary's Hospital in Troy: "I thought I would work there for a year to make it look good on my resume and then go back to Binghamton."

Instead, she remained at St. Mary's for 33 years and then worked in home health care. Now 76, she retired in 1994.

Bronx-born and Yonkers-raised, Mr. Walsh began to work at IBM in 1953 and moved around the country. In North Carolina, he also ran an 83-acre farm and built a shrimp boat.

After he retired, Mr. Walsh, who is about to turn 82, moved to Florida. Then he put his profile on www.catholicsingles.com.

Mrs. Walsh had married late in life. She had no children. Her husband, Lawrence, died after only seven years of marriage. Mr. Walsh had been married 53 years to Stella; they had seven kids. She passed away in 2003.

When Mrs. Walsh scrolled through profiles on the website, she noticed someone identified as "countryboy88." She remembers that "I liked his resume, but then I saw his picture and thought, 'I will never write him.'"

Meanwhile, Mr. Walsh - A.K.A. countryboy88 - saw her entry and thought, "She looks like an ex-nun with that short haircut and plaid jacket."

But Mrs. Walsh admitted, "I kept going back and looking at Bill's picture - every night."

"You were hypnotized," joked her husband. "Actually, it was because she was from Troy and noticed that I had worked upstate. I wrote her, and she replied, 'I can't write because I'm doing Christmas cards,'" a comment he found baffling.

As they continued to correspond online, their long-distance relationship warmed. "I was anxious to meet her," Mr. Walsh recalled, "but my kids were worried."

One of Mrs. Walsh's friends warned her that if she ever met Mr. Walsh in person, she was not to get into his car, because "I don't want to find pieces of you scattered all over."

Finally, Mrs. Walsh told her online friend that she was coming to Florida with friends for a break from winter in New York and wondered if he would like to meet her in person.

Mr. Walsh emailed, "Yes, let's have a date on Sunday and start with Mass."

Mrs. Walsh answered, "Can a friend come with me?"

"As long as she doesn't sit between us," Mr. Walsh said, though he thought, "She lives 1,300 miles away. What could happen?"

What happened was dinner, a quick courtship, marriage at Our Lady of Victory Church and his move to Troy. The couple winter down south.

Mrs. Walsh said that widowed people shouldn't think their own life has ended. "You can and should go on and live your life," she counseled. "My husband told me to marry again and not be alone."

Losing a spouse "leaves such a void in your life," Mr. Walsh added. "You do everything with them - and then they're gone. I cried myself to sleep many a night after my wife died."

When Mrs. Walsh finally met all of her new husband's relatives - children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren - she said, "It was sort of overwhelming, but I felt I had to say something. I thanked them for accepting me. One of his sons grabbed me and said I was all right."

Added Mr. Walsh: "We're opposite sides of the coin, but we get along. We like to hug and hold hands."[[In-content Ad]]

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