TAIPEI -- A Taiwanese woman whose 85 years of marriage to one man broke the world's record for the longest wedlock has died, officials said Wednesday.

Liu Yang-wan, 103, died of heart disease at her home in Kuishan, a town in northern Taoyuan county, on July 14, officials from the Guinness Book of World Records said.

The couple took the world wedlock record after their family applied to Guinness authorities last year, but had yet to receive official notification, Guinness officials said.

"We got the certificate sometime between April and May when the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) ravaged Taiwan. It was not convenient for us to give them the certificate at that time," a Guinness official told AFP.

"We felt really sorry to hear the bad news," he said. The couple married on March 10, 1917.

The previous record was registered in July 2002 by an American couple identified as 105-year-old William B. Ritchie and 98-year-old Claudia Lillian Jackson.