Longtime Husband and Wife Die of AIDS Two Days Apart

AIDS destroyed Ray and Peggy Corey’s health, but it did not touch their love.

After five years fighting the disease, the two died as they had lived--together.

Ray, 58, died first. Peggy, 54, died two days later.

“That’s just the love that they had,” said the couple’s youngest son, Craig Corey.

Craig Corey, his wife, Amanda, and their three children had moved into Peggy and Ray’s home in San Ramon, a suburb about 20 miles east of San Francisco, to take care of the ailing couple in recent years.

Doctors believe that Ray Corey contracted the disease through a blood transfusion during surgery in 1990. He never recovered from that surgery, and in 1991 found out that he was HIV-positive and had already passed it on to his wife.

A family council was called immediately.

“Our family is very open and honest, and especially my dad,” Craig Corey said.

Ray Corey felt guilty for bringing the disease into the family, albeit unwittingly. Peggy Corey felt embarrassed. Craig Corey remembers being “just more numbed. . . . I was saddened for them.”

Despite the devastating blow, the Coreys were not crushed.

Ray Corey retired from his job as a department store executive and he and Peggy, who had quit her accounting job years earlier to spend more time with her family, fought the disease. They took daily walks. Ray gardened while Peggy made plans for their children and nine grandchildren.

They also started visiting schools to warn others about the dangers of AIDS.

“They had a couple of good years,” Craig Corey recalled.

The illness came 30 years into the Coreys’ marriage.

The Coreys started to get sick in 1992. They were in and out of the hospital after that and had been bedridden for the last two months.

“They finally came to accept the fact that they were dying. It was just real sad. A lot of pride got taken away,” Craig Corey said.

In the end, Ray weighed 75 pounds. Peggy was “a little wounded bird” of 55 pounds, her son said.

Ray died Dec. 11.

The next day, “my mom was talking to my dad like he was in heaven,” Craig Corey said.

“My mom kept saying, ‘Hurry up.’ ”

She died Dec. 13.