"She was extremely nice, and very smart ... I mean, quick with the words. Pull a random word out of the dictionary and she'd have a comeback for you," he said.
After juggling scholarships, grants and several part-time jobs, they were forced to drop out of school by financial issues. Their first home as a married couple was in the Irvington area of Baltimore, "and God, it was a dump," he said, laughing.
Later they moved to another fixer-upper with more property in Linthicum, but their marriage wasn't the same. Imre believes she was starting to show the signs.
"Things were starting to get a little strange, and the marriage was getting sort of strained," Imre said. "For a year or two, she really enjoyed gardening. And then it started going downhill."
She would claim to have taken out the garbage when it was still in the house and would angrily accuse Imre of bringing it back in. At one point, the friction almost led to divorce, he said.
They persevered, but the stay-at-home mother resisted going to see a doctor; Imre suspects she knew.
"I said, 'Kathy, something's wrong. You don't do this kind of stuff; you don't live like this,' " he said.
Kathy's younger sister, Margaret Leach, said she started to notice about five years ago that Kathy was losing a lot of weight, dropping several dress sizes, and couldn't stay out for long periods of time. She seemed depressed.
When the confirmation finally came two years ago that his wife had advanced Alzheimer's, Imre felt relief: at least there was an explanation for her irritability, absent-mindedness, paranoia and depression. But it was no consolation for what was to come.
Mary Kate Kovacsi, 28, said her mother wandered away from the house four or five times before she vanished two weeks ago.
Sixty percent of Alzheimer's sufferers are at risk for wandering, and those not found within the first 24 hours have a 50 percent chance of suffering serious injury or death.
"They may talk about going back to home and be referring to someplace they lived when they were 10 years old," said Teri Bennett, the help line coordinator for the Greater Maryland chapter of the Alzheimer's Association.
"Even though they may be in a home they've lived in for the past 20 years, it no longer feels like home because they no longer recognize it."
Imre knew a nursing home was inevitable, but he wanted to keep Kathy at home as long as possible. "It's sort of silly nowadays, but you know what they say: sickness or health, richer or poorer," he said.
