Phil Ikehorn has always been a hopeless romantic, and this Valentine’s Day was no exception.
On every Monday for the last 30 years, Phil has sent his wife, Evelyn, a single red rose in honor of their love.
Since they were married on March 7, 1987, Phil has given Evelyn more than 1,500 red roses.
And he doesn’t stop there! For many years, Phil also gave Evelyn a dozen roses for each year they had been married on their anniversary.
“The first year they came it was quite a surprise,” Evelyn, 72, told ABC News. “It was delivered by FedEx and we had these long stem roses all over the place and I had to find these vases and buckets to put them in. There were so many I had to ask him not to do it. I said, ‘Just send me one rose for each year.’”
Being such a sucker for love, Phil truly goes all out for Valentine’s Day every single year.
According to ABC News, this year, Evelyn received two dozen white roses, two dozen yellow roses, and two boxes of sugar-free chocolate candy from her sweetheart.
“This year he’s also ordered Cheryl’s cookies in heart shapes. And then he knows I love popcorn, so he ordered three different types of popcorn in a big tub from the Popcorn Factory,” she explained. “This was in the last couple weeks. And sometimes candy. From his email, he sends me an inspirational thing each day. He used to send me cards on Fridays. He’s very thoughtful in that way.”
Phil has gone out of his way to make Evelyn feel very special ever since they first met in the 1980s.
When she started dating Phil, Evelyn already had three children from a previous marriage and wasn’t really used to all the attention.
“It’s really special,” she said. “It’s just something I had not been used to -- that kind of attention. It made me feel special and I said, ‘Wow, this is really, really, really nice.' I must be special to him.”
“I started to look forward to it each week,” Evelyn recalled. “When it started coming to my job and other people were noticing, some of the men there said, ‘Don’t tell my wife about this.’”
These days, both Phil and Evelyn are retired, so they are generally home for the Monday delivery.
“We deliver it every Monday before noon,” Michelle Butler, manager of Connells Maple Lee Flowers & Gifts, said of the couple’s standing order. “We have three drivers and they all rotate and know her well. It’s once in a rare moon when she’s not home and they come back worried that she wasn’t home. She’s just a sweetheart. All of my drivers say they’re a super sweet, wonderful people.”