Since they married 68 years ago, Jack and Nancy Gatewood spent almost every minute together — and, sadly, their deaths proved to be no different when the couple died just hours apart.

Nancy, 88, passed away on Jan. 15 shortly before her beloved husband, Jack, 88, died the next morning on Jan. 16, a local newspaper reported.

couple deaths
‘Tulsa World’ | Gatewood Family

Jack and Nancy in 1946.

Mrs. Gatewood spent the last few weeks of her life in the hospital dealing with complications from a broken hip and pneumonia. Jack — who was suffering from dementia — passed away hours after his wife, before his family was able to tell him the news of Nancy’s passing.

“We believe it was a broken heart,” the couple’s son Jack Gatewood II told ‘Tulsa World.’ “I know that’s old-fashioned to say, that it doesn’t hold up medically. But she had been gone from his life, and we believe he was grieving for her.”

The high school sweethearts — who married in 1946 after Jack returned from serving in WWII — lived in Tulsa, Okla., where they raised four sons together.