Former Ontario Lt.-Gov. Lincoln Alexander is nine months shy of his 90th birthday. His time on the planet has produced a string of firsts — Canada’s first black member of Parliament, first black cabinet minister, first black vice-regal representative.

The last thing he expected, says the man fondly known as Linc, was to be getting married again.

“Well, I don’t know how the hell it happened,” he told the Star in a deep rumble that still seems to come from the bottom of a well. “I guess she just fell for my baloney.”

“She” is Marni Beal, a “60ish” sales representative at the Hamilton Spectator, who seems precisely the sort of woman Alexander has been most taken by in his life — the striking and the strong.

The couple — each with a son, a daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, a keen sense of humour and an abiding sense of style — was introduced about two years ago by Hamilton photographer David Gruggen.

He invited Beal to the Old Mill in Toronto to listen to some jazz. It was a Thursday night in November. She was quite content at home “on my couch, with my foot warmer, my Bernese mountain dog.”

Then, she decided maybe it wasn’t “right to be spending so much time alone or with (Dräger) the dog.” She went. She met Alexander. And they hit it off immediately.

“His smile absolutely lights up my world,” she says.

Beal divorced 12 years ago after a 23-year marriage. Alexander’s wife Yvonne died in 1999 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. In an age of exploding rates of later-life divorce, with the likes of Al and Tipper Gore calling it quits after 40 years, everybody seems happy to hear their mature love story.

The fact Beal was nearly 30 years younger was more a sticking point for Alexander, he said, than the fact he’s black and she’s white.

“If you go to Toronto, the place is full of inter-racial couples. Race doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore.

“(But) an old codger like me marrying a girl 30 years his junior?! . . . I was afraid to ask her.”

He was at home one night. Beal went to see him. He had trouble hearing then. (He’s getting a new hearing aid.) So she wrote him a note that said: “It’s OK. It’s time. It’s OK to ask me.”

“And he did.

“Of course, I said: ‘Absolutely.’”

The life of Linc Alexander has been full of serendipity. He hadn’t planned on entering law school until he got turned down for a salesman’s job because of his colour. Politics also “was never on his radar” through his early law career. Life, happily, has a way of surprising you.

“All of sudden, this young lady came into my life at the Old Mill,” Alexander said of their first date. “Next day, I took her out to one of the Raptors ballgames. And from then on we just kept hanging out.”

In modern parlance, they got each other.

When Beal describes her betrothed as “so open and gracious and generous and caring,” it’s telling what adjective comes first.

Lincoln Alexander has been one of Canada’s most emotionally open public figures.

In his memoir five years ago, Alexander said there’s nothing he’s cherished so much as the strong women in his life — namely, his mother, Mae Rose, and first wife Yvonne.

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Alexander told of his youthful hell-raising, of drinking and marijuana use. “Unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale. . . I spent a lot of time on the dark side, smoking, drinking and partying.” His late wife had a lot to do with getting him centred, Alexander said. “Honestly, if I hadn’t married Yvonne, I don’t know what I would have become.”

As it happened, age was briefly an issue during that courtship as well. Yvonne was five years older and “she didn’t want to go out with me because she thought people would laugh at her for robbing the cradle. But I knew she loved me.”

“For more than 50 years, Yvonne was the one who moulded me, counselled me, and had confidence in me. I relied on her.”

After a decade as a widower, Lincoln Alexander found a hole in his life. Upon meeting Marni Beal, he found it filled. “She looks after me. She’s very sensitive, very beautiful, very warm.”

Beal describes their relationship this way: “I became his driver, caregiver, administrator, photo-shoot director, PR person, agent, security-chief, gofer, a female version of a ‘gentleman’s gentleman,’ physiotherapist, advance man (er, woman), bodyguard with first aid/CPR training and life partner.

“And he became mine.”

She knows she is marrying a public man. She was surprised to find, after they met, that the phone would ring late at night in the Hamilton retirement home where Alexander’s living until the couple settles on a place of their own.

She was shocked to find his number was still listed and that people still had access to him. She asked why.

“He stunned me with his reply: ‘I’m here to serve, not be an obstacle.’ I’ll never forget it.”

News of their engagement, and a small family wedding to be held near the end of July, have elicited nothing but good wishes, Alexander says.

At a Raptors game on the weekend, fans approached him to shake hands — and not because he was a former lieutenant-governor. “They were saying, ‘Are you the one that’s getting married?’ I said, ‘Yep, that’s me!’

“Everybody’s in favour. I’ve got my (mobility) scooter. (In Hamilton), I drive around the city. They’re all, ‘Way to go, Linc!’ They shake hands. They’re very supportive. Our families are very supportive. So I have nothing to worry about.

“I know who I am. And I’m very happy.”