Word for the day -- College widow

A "college widow," according to the venerable Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, is a "young woman in a college town who dates students of successive college classes."

I cannot help but think that there must be some sort of story behind this.  Apparently, it was the title of a stage production in 1904, and a subsequent silent film, but details of the story are lost, so it's hard to know if there is a connection.  At least one reviewer claims that there is, for whatever that's worth, but seems to indicate that the term was part of the common lexicon at the time, indicating in turn that this was a relatively common occurrence.  I'm a little bewildered, I must confess.