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, aged 95, and Mary Kroger, who will be 95 in May, shared with the Washington Post that their yearly tradition began when they were just 14 years old, having met shortly after DeReamer’s family relocated 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.
After six decades of exchanging the same card every year, the pair successfully secured the Guinness World Record for the “Longest Greetings Card Exchange.” However, the current title is held by two Australian friends who have been trading cards for 61 years. DeReamer and Kroger have applied to regain the record and are currently awaiting a response, as reported by the Washington Post.
The potentially record-breaking card, with its cartoon dog sporting a large red and black polka-dot bow tie on the cover, features the message: “Here’s wishing you a BIRTHDAY that really is COLOSSAL.” Inside the card, there is a depiction of a huge dinosaur skeleton alongside the same dog from the front, accompanied by the words: “’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.
