"In 2016, on his way to California for a series of concerts, [Arlo] Guthrie had a stroke. Ms. Ladd flew to San Jose, into grateful arms."

"'He said, "I not only want you in my life, I need you in my life." To me, that was when we made a real commitment to each other.'... He had been performing the 18-minute monologue at Carnegie Hall every Thanksgiving for 49 years when he had another stroke days before the 50th anniversary show in 2019. This time, he was hospitalized. But he defied doctor’s orders and played anyway. 'Even if I died onstage, I was going to be there,' he said. A few days later, he woke up at his home in Sebastian, Fla., and had a third stroke. Ms. Ladd... nursed him through his recovery. By the end of the year, he was back on tour. Then came Covid.... Ms. Ladd and Mr. Guthrie were... quarantining in Massachusetts when Ms. Ladd had a stroke on Oct. 3, 2021.At first, Mr. Guthrie didn’t know what was happening. 'When she was talking to me it sounded like gibberish,' he said. 'I thought she was fooling.'... On one of her first nights home [from the hospital], she tried to say the word 'apocalyptical.' 'It came out "Popsicle,"' she said. 'Arlo was cracking up.' Underneath his amusement over her verbal stumble, though, was a welling of emotion about the woman who, for nearly a decade, had shepherded him through his own crises. 'My father always said be true to your own life and your own reality,' Mr. Guthrie said. His reality, and Ms. Ladd’s, had become anchored to a sense of life’s fragility.... On Oct. 22, Mr. Guthrie proposed at the farm, over morning coffee at the kitchen table. 'I said, "I’m going to take care of you the way a man wants to. I want to marry you."'"

From "They Could Be Anything They Want (Together)/The folk singer Arlo Guthrie and Marti Ladd, who met 20 years ago, forged a long lasting friendship that started over Guinness beer and his grandmother’s cheese blintzes" (NYT).

Arlo Guthrie was married to his first wife, Jackie, for 46 years. She died in 2012. Marti Ladd was a friend who became closer after Jackie's death.