Finding The Perfect Dance Partner
Whether you do it for art or for exercise, whether you move with grace - or unintended hilarity - whether you mambo or tango or just want to party like it's 1979.
"If you wanna dance you gotta find the right dance partner," said Ginger Arn.
This story is about finding that perfect partner.
Ninety-three-year-old Ginger Arn has spent most of the last century looking for somebody to dance with, CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports for "Assignment America."
"As far back as I can remember all I wanted to do was dance," Arn said.
As a kid, she used to daydream about all the places her husband would take her dancing.
Unfortunately, the man she married turned out to be less like Gene Kelly and more like a lamppost.
He never danced with her at any party they ever went to - a real stick in the mud, she says. But they had kids, so Arn stayed with him all of 53 years.
"I married him for better or for worse," she said. "If I got the worse end of the deal that was tough."
When he died, though, Arn decided her days of sitting out dances were done. So at the age of 87, she got all dolled up and drove herself to a Kansas City dance hall - where she met a widower named Warren Haycock. It was love at first salsa.
"I didn't dream anything like this existed," Arn said.
Haycock said: "She says, 'Would you like to know where I live?' So I followed her home and found this place."
"Yea," Arn said. "Nothing slow about me."
And to make an uncomfortable story short …
"Now we live in sin!" Arn said.
But more importantly, they live to dance.
If there's a dance anywhere in the Kansas City area, Arn and Haycock are surely there.
In fact often they'll be at one dance 'til midnight, be at another the next morning, and then another later that afternoon.
To keep the wardrobe fresh, Haycock has given his girlfriend more than 50 of those twirly skirts. And boy, to they get a workout.
So, what has all this dancing done for her?
After waiting half a century to dance, Arn was only going to waste so much time yapping about it.
She told Hartman to come back in six years to see her dancing on her 100th birthday.
Hartman said: "I'll bring my watchin' shoes."
