Their love story spans decades. A local couple is celebrating a marriage milestone most people don't expect to hit.

Paul Cassidy raises a glass and toasts his wife, a woman he married on Aug. 1, 1942.

"The time has gone by like 70 minutes," he says.

The two dated for 5 years, while Paul saved for a ring, making 47 cents an hour.

"In those days, I just had to make more money in order to support a wife," he said.

The chip of diamond and gold band is the one Paul picked out of a jewelry case at Cowell & Hubbard on Euclid Avenue.

"Got a ring on December the 6th, 1941," he said. 

He was going to propose the next day. But when he was buying a cigar at the corner store, he heard an emergency broadcast announcing that Pearl Harbor had just been attacked.

"Shows you what kind of luck I had."

Knowing he'd ship out and possibly not make it back, Paul kept the ring in his pocket for a while. He and Elise decided to get married 10 days before he deployed to be a navigator in B-17's.

"If I dwelt on the fact that he was getting shot at, and as I say, he only flew 28 missions, I flew one every day. You wouldn't have made it through," says Elise.

After four years of war, Paul came home. They had 4 children and celebrated countless birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.

But for their 70th wedding anniversary, Paul and Elise celebrated at Cowell and Hubbard, now a restaurant, where Paul bought that ring decades before, something Paul never imagined would happen.

"And if somebody said, talked about it to me, I would have said, 'hey, what are you drinking?'"

WKYC-TV