"When your report deadline is approaching, but you also have an orchestra performance".
The Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra performs “The Typewriter” at a concert hall in Brandenburg, Germany, in 2012.
A 92-year-old North Carolina man got so bored 2 months into retirement that he applied to work at Chick-fil-A...
...his smile, kindness, and passion for Jesus became so contagious that when he got sick and missed 3 days of work, an ENTIRE TOWN began asking where he was.
His name is Gilbert Martin.
Everybody calls him "Mr. Gil."
Mr. Gil is 92 years old, and works at the Chick-fil-A on Oleander Drive in Wilmington, NC.
He spent decades working in the natural gas industry and when he retired, he greeted people at Sam's Club for 12 MORE years, until they eliminated his position.
Most people would call that a sign to finally rest, but not Mr. Gil!
Two months into retirement, he got bored... so he walked into Chick-fil-A and put in an application.
He was 86 years old at the time.
He's been there ever since.
Not one or two shifts a week either. Monday through Friday.
He says the full schedule gives him more chances to be there for people who need him.
His official job is dining host.
Clean tables.
Clean floors.
But Mr Gil doesn't see it that way... as he describes it, his real job is:
"I get a lot of people that are coming in, just been to the doctor, and got bad news... I'm able to be an encourager; the Lord gave me that."
A 92-year-old man who could be resting at home... chooses to stand in a dining room five days a week... so strangers on the worst day of their lives don't have to be alone.
And Wilmington noticed.
When Mr. Gil caught a cold and missed a couple of days, the owner said he was FLOODED with HUNDREDS of customers who were panicked about him.
Mr. Gil has zero plans to retire.
He says if you ever see him working, come say hi.
"I don't know what 92 is supposed to feel like, but I feel great. Serving others has always brought me joy because I believe that a smile and a kind word can make someone's day a little brighter.”
We need more of this!!!!!
"It is my Great Honor to have just appointed, as Press Secretary, Katie Zacharia... I am confident that Katie will deliver strong results for our Country as the next White House Press Secretary, as she has the respect of, and will work fantastically with, the Media, the American People, and my Administration." - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸
They met the way a lot of lasting things begin in West Miami: at a neighborhood party, not a strategy session. Jeanette Dousdebes was seventeen. Marco Rubio was nineteen.
Both were children of immigrants who had traded one hard country for another and expected their kids to do the rest.
His parents had come from Cuba; his father tended bar, his mother cleaned hotel rooms. Hers had come from Colombia; her mother later ran a small transport business, and Jeanette grew up with three sisters in a house that split when she was six. She has said that fracture gave her a clear aim—build the stable family she had not always had.
They started as friends. The romance took years. On Valentine’s Day 1997 he took her to the top of the Empire State Building, a gesture borrowed from Sleepless in Seattle, and proposed while fretting he might drop the ring. She said yes. That same year she was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader alongside her younger sister and appeared in the team’s first swimsuit calendar. She left the squad in 1998. They married on October 17 at the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables.
The early jobs were ordinary and specific. As a teenager Marco built cages for exotic birds and washed dogs to scrape together money for Dolphins tickets. Jeanette kept a low public profile once his career began, hosting Bible study at home and founding JDR Consulting to support philanthropic groups.
Early on she took him to a shelter for children who had survived abuse; the visit stayed with him and later showed up in legislation he co-sponsored.
Their children are Amanda (born 2000, who studied journalism and worked at NBC), Daniella, Anthony, and Dominick. On January 20, 2025, the Senate confirmed him 99–0 as the 72nd Secretary of State—the first Latino to hold the office.
In May 2025 he was also named Acting National Security Advisor, a pairing last seen with Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. In November 2025 he posted a photograph of the two of them at a White House evening event, both smiling.
The through-line is not the titles. It is two people from the same tight immigrant neighborhood who spent years as friends before they became anything else, and who have kept the private life largely private while the public one expanded. 🇺🇸🌹