Maybe he'd found it preferable to blow out the candles on his 70th birthday cake next to his 56 year old first wife of 30 years instead of with a 35 year old ex secretary second wife - like so many members of Congress have.
Which is exactly what Moore did.
More power to him
Strom Thurmond was 44 when he married his first wife, Jean Crouch (1926–1960), in the South Carolina Governor’s mansion on November 7, 1947.[30] In April 1947, when Crouch was a senior at Winthrop College, Thurmond was a judge in a beauty contest in which she was selected as Miss South Carolina. He 44 & she 21
Thurmond married his second wife, Nancy Janice Moore (born 1946), on December 22, 1968. He was 66 years old and she was 22. She had won Miss South Carolina in 1965.
At age 68 in 1971, Thurmond fathered the first of four children with Nancy, who was then 25.
Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican.