Yasuo Tanabe appeared on "Tetsuko's Room" broadcast on August 25th with his wife Yumiko Kokonoe

Singer Yumiko Kokonoe and her husband, singer Yasuo Tanabe, appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which aired on August 25th. They revealed the circumstances surrounding their marriage 52 years ago.

According to Kokonoe, when they were 18 years old, Morishige Hisaya decided to marry them, saying, "You two will eventually get married, and when that happens, I'll be your matchmaker." This was a time when she was trying to work hard, so she hesitated. "When I looked at Yasuo's face, he said 'yes' and his face was bright red, so I thought, 'Oh, I see, that's how he felt,'" she recalls. However, she thought it would be bad for two "inexperienced people" to just go ahead and get married, so she told Tanabe, "If when we meet again we decide that this person is the one for us, then let's think about it. Until then, let's wait a little while."

Tanabe said, "I'll never forget the time of the 1970 World Expo, when I was singing here and there," and one day when she looked at the script, she saw that "Kokonoe Yumiko" was listed as one of the cast members. "I was in a difficult position. I wondered what I should do. It had been a long time since I last saw her," she said. Kokonoe revealed, "When I was on the plane and saw the script with Tanabe Yasuo written on it, my heart skipped a beat, for the first time. When I saw the handwriting of Tanabe Yasuo, my heart skipped a beat. What should I talk about when we meet? It had been a long time since we last met. I had been thinking about it a lot. As soon as we met, it was like nothing happened, we were like, let's go out together. We both thought that."

They were estranged for four or five years after Morishige's "premonition," but Tanabe said that during that time, Kokonoe was "stubbornly not going to call." Kokonoe said, "I was told I was a cold woman like the devil. That's not true, I think there was a bigger reason behind it (that he just didn't contact me), but no matter how much I explained, he didn't understand." Kokonoe continued, "I was crazy about him. Come to think of it, he (Tanabe) was talking to me. Confess."

The presidents of both their agencies told them to "announce your engagement when you return to Tokyo." Kokonoe said, "The adults have made the decision properly, so we thought we should just follow their lead," and they decided to do so after discussing it together. Tanabe reflected, "I think it was fate that the two of us met."

Tanabe-san is 80 years old, and Kokonoe-san is 79. Their grandchildren call them "I-san" and "A-san," omitting the "uncle" and "aunt" parts.