Elderly couple married for 58 years found by each other’s side in Miami condo collapse

Couple met as 12-year-olds in Cuba before immigrating to the United States and marrying on Miami Beach

Antonio and Gladys Lozan spent their lives together.

As rescuers dug through the rubble of the Surfside condo collapse, they found the husband and wife together until the end, side by side, in the bed they shared on the ninth floor of the Champlain Towers South.

They are two of the 11 confirmed dead as the search continues for 150 still missing. No survivors have been found after five days of around-the-clock efforts to locate the missing.

The couple would have celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary next month. Instead, son Sergio told CBS Miami, Mr and Mrs Lozan’s two children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren will attend their funeral.

“I was told they were in bed together. That’s the end of the romantic story,” he said.

That story began when they were just 12-years-old in Cuba and continued after Mr Lozan moved to the United States. They eventually married on Miami Beach in the early 1960s, Sergio said. They had been together so long, they’d joke about what would happen if they lost the other.

“My dad would say to my mom, ‘If you die, I don’t even know how to fry an egg, I’m gonna die.’ My mom would say, if my dad would die, ‘I don’t know how to pay the bills.’ I always told my mom, ‘Don’t worry, I will do it," he told CBS Miami.

The three had dinner in the apartment complex just hours before the collapse, with Sergio telling CBS heard hugged his mum and kissed his dad goodnight.

Soon after, he heard the disaster unfold from his apartment in the neighbouring Champlain East building.

“I thought it was a tornado outside my apartment. I opened the door and I told my wife, ‘The building is not there.’ She goes, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The building, is gone.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘My parents’ apartment is not there!’” he told the outlet.

He never imagined their dinner a few hours earlier would be the last time he saw his parents. But there was some comfort in knowing they were with each other to the end.

"But they died together. It’s not fair, being crushed, being destroyed, not fair," he said.