Mike and Margaret Volpe made out in the middle of the Pensacola International Airport ticketing area on Christmas Eve like teenagers on a hot date.
The kiss was long and passionate, a celebration of that serendipitous Christmas Eve morning 50 years ago when the two first laid eyes on one another, during a chance meeting at the Pensacola airport.
He was a young Navy officer assigned to the USS Lexington at Pensacola Naval Air Station. She was a young research scientist at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute at Pensacola NAS.
She was flying home to Charleston, South Carolina, hauling an overflowing bundle of Christmas presents with her. He was flying home to see family in New York and gave her a hand.
And they've been together ever since.
Mike and Margaret — both in their 70s now — returned to the Pensacola International Airport this Christmas Eve to revisit the start of their love story. She carried a white mum. Fifty years ago, she had the same flower pinned to her dress; she had just returned from a wedding and was still in her bridesmaid's dress.
Mike spied her when she first entered the airport struggling with her packages. His first impression?
"Mmmm," he recalled.
They struck up a conversation, found they would be on the same National Airlines flight, and sat together on the plane until she departed in Charleston.
By then, he already had her phone number and promised to call her when they both returned to Pensacola in a week.
"It was before the New Year,'' Margaret said about that first call.
They went out on a first date the day he returned. Three months later, Mike and Margaret were engaged. Eight months later, they were married.
"We just had chemistry right away,'' said Mike, who would leave the Navy and work in the computer business. "We still have it." (Margaret would later work for the Department of the Navy submarine program.)
They're one of those too-cute couples who even finish each other's sentences sometimes.
The Volpes, who now live in Northern Virginia, have two children and two grandchildren.
Sunday's return to Pensacola was their first visit to the area since 1989 — their only previous trip after the couple left the area in the early 1970s. They drove in from New Orleans, where they were visiting, and planned to spend Christmas Eve afternoon touring Pensacola before heading out.
"Palafox is something else,'' Mike said. "There's a lot going on downtown. It's pretty impressive. We didn't even recognize it." Though they did recognize Seville Quarter's Rosie O'Grady's, one of the places where the young couple would visit.
But the most important site they wanted to see was the airport where a 'til-death-do-us-part love story was born on Christmas Eve, a half century ago.
"We came for this,'' Mike said, before embracing his love and kissing her long and deep.
For Mike and Margaret, it's been a life of mistletoe.
