Alabama man serenades wife of 43 years to restaurant cheers

ORLANDO, Fla. (WSFA) - For a man who keeps a song on his heart and is always looking for ways to put a smile on his bride’s face, Ernest Griggs had had enough.

He’d already heard servers belt out the happy birthday tune twice for others while the couple was seated at a restaurant in Orlando during a recent trip.

Those at the table with him knew he was up to something as he slid out of the booth and stood up, but no one was celebrating a birthday. As a matter of fact, they were in town for a funeral.

What happened next was quintessentially Ernest Griggs, and you’d know that after talking to him for just five seconds.

“I’m an old quartet singer,” he admitted.

As Lyndy Griggs, his wife, quietly looked on from her plate, she got yet another public profession of her husband’s love. He didn’t realize he was being recorded for others to see.

When it was over and the cameras had stopped, he said she leaned over and wiped a tear from her eye and said “that just made my day.”

The dance moves? He says he borrowed those from The Temptations. But before you’re tempted to Google the lyrics to his song, just know you’re results will come back not found.

That song on his heart is all original.

“It’s just for her,” he explained. “I don’t sing it to anybody else.”

Ernest and Lyndy grew up in towns about 15 miles from each other and met for the first time at a water fountain in a church in the small town of Waverly, Florida. He was 18 and she was 16.

It’s a town not unlike that of Waverly, Alabama, not far from the Loachapoka home in Lee County they’ve lived in since 1980. “Two stop signs and a caution light,” he laughed.

Over the last 43 years, the couple has welcomed four “very musically inclined” sons and six grandchildren.

Griggs says the secret to a long, happy marriage is keeping God at the center, “because everything can fall apart at any time, and you need the glue of God to hold things together.”

Griggs says he and his wife have worked hard every day to love each other more each day than the one prior.

“Now that man is in love,” Griggs said he overheard a woman in the booth behind him saying to her own husband, a couple he suspects has been married to each other much longer.

It’s proof positive that his love grew a little more since the day before, and that’s music to everyone’s ears.

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