Elmer and Charlotte Mosko's 61-year love affair came quietly to an end last week when they died three days apart in the Bel Air home they had shared for 48 years.
Mrs. Mosko, who was 85, died Wednesday of stomach cancer, and her husband, who was 86, died Saturday of congestive heart failure.
"After she died, he said, 'When you lose one, you know you're going to lose both,' " said a daughter, Jane Volker, who lives in Bel Air.
"They couldn't live without one another, and I think he realized that he was going to be with her very soon," Mrs. Volker said. "He wanted to look at her pictures one more time as her death began to sink in."
The former Charlotte Caroline Frances Kalb, the daughter of a baker-restaurant owner and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Essex.
"I have always thought it was appropriate that her birthday was Valentine's Day because she always had an abundance of kindness and love to share," Mrs. Volker said.
Mrs. Mosko was a graduate of St. Elizabeth Parochial School, where she earned a diploma from its business department, and during World War II worked for the rationing board in Dundalk.
During those years, she also worked with her three sisters in their father's Eastern Avenue business, Kalb's All-American Restaurant, as a cashier.
Elmer Andrew Mosko, the son of a Lackawanna Railroad engine hostler and a homemaker, was born and raised in Scranton, Pa.
After graduating from high school in 1941, he moved to Essex and went to work as a draftsman at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River.
In 1944, he joined the Army Air Forces, where he was trained as a navigator. After the war ended, he resumed his career at Martin.
Mr. Mosko, who knew two of his future wife's sisters who also worked at Martin, was a regular customer at Kalb's.
"My mother had had a crush on him for a longtime," said another daughter, Mary Ellen Sullivan of St. Cloud, Minn.
"One Sunday evening when she was working, he came and asked if he could take her out to the movies. Her father said it was all right, and she took off her apron. So they had their first date at the Essex movie theater," Mrs. Sullivan said.
They were married March 29, 1948, and lived in Essex for more than a decade before moving in 1961 to their Bel Air home, where they raised their seven children.
At the end of the war and for more than the next two decades, Mr. Mosko worked on interior designs of aircraft, including life support and escape systems and survival equipment.
