Couple Reunited by a Kidney

Thanks to a reunion in an operating room, Jim and Bernadette Tobin found their way down the aisle—again.

The Hull, Mass., residents got hitched a second time in March, 17 years after divorcing and 10 years after Bernadette donated a kidney to Jim, who was then her ex-husband.

“We’ve already been through ‘for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,’ ” says Bernadette, 63. The Tobins, who were high school sweethearts, were married 27 years the first time and grew apart after raising two daughters. But that changed following Jim’s transplant operation, which saved his life from polycystic kidney disease. Afterward, they lived together for eight years.

“The first two or three [years], we were just roommates,” says Jim, 64. But that platonic relationship eventually turned into something much more. Jim says Bernadette looked at him one night and said that although she had thought that she would never have the same feeling as she did when she was a young girl, that’s exactly what had happened: She loved him again.

Those words “really moved my heart,” says Jim, who’s now looking forward to enjoying his five granddaughters as a happily remarried man.

Blair S. Walker, who frequently writes for the Bulletin’s In the News section, lives in Miami.