Kentucky Man's Wedding Ring Returned to Widow 61 Years After He Lost It: 'Needle in a Haystack'

Barbara Gregory was reunited with her late husband Glenn's wedding ring, which he lost in their yard back in 1963

A Kentucky woman whose husband died of cancer in December has been reunited with a sentimental piece of their decades-long union.

Roughly 61 years after Glenn Davis of Henry County misplaced his wedding ring on the couple's farm, the ring has been found and returned to his widow Barbara Gregory, she told local CBS affiliate WLKY this week.

After their 1963 honeymoon, which took place not long after their wedding that year, both Glenn and his wife planted a tree on their farm. As Barbara told WLKY, it "kept growing and growing" as their marriage did the same. But two months after the wedding, while Glenn was setting a footer in the ground for their mobile home, he lost his ring.

“We immediately started looking and never found it,” Barbara said.

Related: Widow Wore Late Husband's Wedding Ring on a Chain Around Her Neck for 1 Year — Then She Discovered It Wasn't His

Not long after Glenn's death, Searcy Monument Co. was hired to place a marker on his grave near the couple's tree on their farm. Jonathan Searcy, who was working on the grave, said he saw something glistening while doing some digging and it ended up being Glenn's 1963 wedding ring.

“Odds are a million to one. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. God works in mysterious ways,” he said.

Now Barbara has two mementos to remember her late husband. The recovered 1963 ring found by Searcy and the ring that he died with, which she decided to keep herself.

“I didn’t send it with him. I thought maybe he might lose it on his way to heaven. I don't know,” she laughed.

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While some wedding ring discoveries are a result of happenstance, one couple in particular last year was able to find their long-lost ring with the help of a diving team.

Back in 2023, “college sweethearts” David and Lisa Allen — who wed in 1990 before divorcing in 1998 and later reuniting — began to search for David's missing wedding ring. The South Carolina man lost it in Lake Hartwell sometime after their initial split, but with the help of the Lake Hartwell Divers, he was reunited with it after just four days of searching. "It means so much to him and his family," Lake Hartwell Divers owner Jeremy Robinson told WYFF 4. "So, it meant a lot to us to help him get it back."

"Before the ring went in, I wasn't the husband I should have been," David told local outlet Fox Carolina. "And that ring got baptized basically and I'm a different person today. It's a new life, it’s like being born again."

Other missing wedding rings in recent months have been found at recycling centers, in store bags, on the New York MTA and in one woman's abdominal area after she swallowed it.

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