A Kentucky woman whose husband died of cancer in December has regained an important part of her decades-long marriage.

About 61 years after Glenn Davis of Henry County misplaced his wedding ring on the couple’s farm, the ring was found and returned to his widow, Barbara Gregory, she told local CBS affiliate WLKY this week.

After their 1963 honeymoon, which took place not long after their wedding, both Glenn and his wife planted a tree on their farm. As Barbara told WLKY, it “just kept growing,” as did their marriage. But two months after the wedding, as Glenn was laying the foundation for their mobile home, he lost his ring.

“We started searching immediately and never found it,” Barbara said.

Not long after Glenn’s death, the Searcy Monument Co. was hired to place a headstone on Glenn’s grave next to the couple’s tree on their farm. Jonathan Searcy, who was working on the grave, said he saw something glittering while digging and it turned out to be Glenn’s 1963 wedding ring.

“The odds are one in a million. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. God’s ways are unfathomable,” he said.

Now Barbara has two mementos of her late husband: the ring Searcy found in 1963 and the ring he was wearing when he died, which she wanted to keep for herself.

“I didn’t send it to him. I thought maybe he’d lose it on the way to heaven. I don’t know,” she laughed.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

While some wedding ring finds are more of a coincidence, last year a couple managed to find their long-lost ring with the help of a diving team.

In 2023, “college sweethearts” David and Lisa Allen – who married in 1990, divorced in 1998 and later got back together – began searching for David’s missing wedding ring. The South Carolina man lost it in Lake Hartwell sometime after their first breakup, but with the help of Lake Hartwell Divers, it was recovered after just four days of searching. “It means so much to him and his family,” Jeremy Robinson, owner of Lake Hartwell Divers, told WYFF 4. “So it meant a lot to us to help him get it back.”

“Before the ring was put in, I wasn’t the husband I should have been,” David told local station Fox Carolina. “And that ring was basically baptized and I’m a different person today. It’s a new life, it’s like a rebirth.”

Other missing wedding rings have been found in recent months in recycling centers, in shopping bags, on the New York MTA and in a woman’s stomach area after she swallowed it.