Can you really die of a broken heart?

You often see stories about elderly couples, who have been together for decades, dying within a few days of each other. Perhaps the most high-profile examples are June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash. We are drawn to these melancholy but heart-warming stories, probably because they suggest that love really does last forever, even beyond death. And that’s a nice thought. But is there really anything in it, or is it just coincidence? It may seem that it happens often, but that is likely a consequence of cherry-picking by the media. “Elderly couple die hours apart” is a human interest news story.
 “Millions of people outlive their spouse by more than a decade” is not, so we only hear about the former. This doesn’t mean that people who outlive their partners by a non-newsworthy margin didn’t really love them, it’s just that circumstances are different.
 But it turns out there is some actual science behind the phenomenon.