WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, a Royal Oak Democrat who lost his wife Vicki after 50 years of marriage in 2008, married again late last month in a private ceremony in Ferndale.

Levin and his family – including U.S. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan – were celebrating Sander Levin’s marriage to Pamela Cole, a professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, at the congressman’s vacation home in West Tisbury, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard.

Cole, 61, and Levin, 80, were married by – and at the home of – Ferndale Mayor Dave Coulter on July 21, the congressman told the Free Press. Levin and Cole are both widowed and knew each other because Cole served on a National Institutes of Health panel where she and Vicki Levin became friends.

After Vicki Levin’s death, Sander Levin and Cole teamed up to set up an award fund in Vicki Levin’s name for young professionals working on child development – a passion of Levin’s late wife and Cole, who studies emotional development in early childhood.

“I don’t think it was something expected but we had a lot of common interests and we both suffered severe loss,” Rep. Levin said. “It was a combination of shared memories and shared love.”

The wedding announcement read: “In sharing together the losses of each of our beloved spouses, we came to discover strong common interests, and love for one another.”

Levin is a former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and remains the top ranking Democrat on the panel. He said Cole was serving a fellowship at NIH and that the two will continue to divide their time between Washington, D.C., Michigan and Pennsylvania.

He is running for his 16th two-year term in Congress this fall.