Man secretly reminds co-worker’s husband of their wedding anniversary, wins hearts online

Anniversaries are everything in a relationship. They are a reminder to celebrate love and your partner. As time passes, people tend to take their partner for granted and that is often the first sign of a relationship heading south. Anniversaries are a great way to keep the spark alive. One person helped out his co-worker by secretly reminding her husband that it was their anniversary. They shared their experience from more than two decades ago on Reddit where it went viral with more than 172,000 upvotes. People couldn't get enough of the story and said they wished for such co-workers themselves. 

"A woman co-worker of mine was miserable at work one day," he wrote. "I asked her what was wrong... She told me it was her anniversary, and she knew her husband had forgotten." This happened more than two decades ago when you couldn't easily text or call a person directly. You had to use a corded phone to dial someone up, and hope they were there to answer the call. The person knew the woman's husband would be at work so devised a way to get the message across to him that relied on the kids.

"She had pre-teen girls at home during summer vacation. I knew her home phone number (pre-cell phone era). I called her home phone number and one kid picked up. I explained to the kid who I was, and that she needed to call Dad at work and remind him it was Mom and Dad's anniversary," he said, before telling them, "Don't tell Mom or Dad I called." He didn't know if the message had been passed on until the next morning. "The next day she was all smiles, gosh he DID remember, brought home flowers, and took her to dinner. Mission accomplished. Not a word was ever said about this..." he wrote. "Until 6 years later, when she left the company. She gave me a hug at a farewell luncheon, and whispered, 'my kids ratted you out. Thank you.'"     

People praised the wholesome act of the co-worker, with some even sharing their own. "I did this for a co-worker at one of my previous jobs, she was fighting cancer at the time, and it was not looking good, so I covertly called her husband and told him, since she was trying to put on a brave face. So that night for their anniversary, he did a huge blowout bash of an anniversary for her. On a good note, she beat cancer. It was just a very long fight. Little acts of kindness can make big waves of happiness when done right," he wrote. 

After some questioned if forgetting an anniversary was such a deal-breaker, the original poster provided more context to their story and they needed that push. "'Leslie' was raped and impregnated by a close family member at the age of 15. She was forced by her family to carry the baby to term. 'Tom' was a high school classmate of hers, he offered to marry her and claim paternity when he was 16," he wrote. "Her family consented because it would draw suspicion away from the family rapist. Her family was one of the most dysfunctional I've ever seen. Against all odds, Tom and Leslie made their marriage work. He dropped out of school and poured concrete for a living, from sunup to sundown. He supported his wife and treated that girl as if it was his own. They had another child two years later. He supported his family and made enough money to send his wife to community college, where she learned computer programming. I met her when she was thirty-one and had been married for 15 years. She was a college intern who we hired full-time. I worked side by side with her for seven years...after a few years, she confided in the circumstances of her life. I have nothing but the utmost respect for both of them," he concluded.