He was shipping off to the Navy.

Her daddy wrote it off as puppy love.

Lena Mae and Douglas Eaker wouldn't listen.

"Will you," he asked her in a pick-up truck.

"All right," she said.

A week before he had to set sail, the Eakers got married.

"Everybody thought it wasn't going to work," says Lena Mae Eaker, 89.

Seventy years later, the doubters have faded.

"I guess it lasted," says Douglas Eaker, 91.

If ever there was a marriage that beat the odds, this is the one.

When the Eakers got hitched, people weren't expected to live as long as their matrimony has.

Never mind divorce rates.

They were pulled apart. By the Navy. By money. And there was a time, when enemy planes swarmed around them, that they thought they'd never see each other again.

On Saturday, the Apex couple will celebrate their 70th anniversary at the Cary Masonic Lodge.

How it began

Lena Mae remembers when Douglas, a handsome 17-year-old just entering the Navy, came to visit her folks in Virginia.

She was a mature 15, the lady of the house since her mother passed two years prior.

Douglas was off to China for his first deployment, the couple's first test.

They courted each other through letters for several years.

"Is he going to come back home?" she remembers thinking.

He did.

But their time together was short.

He had to board the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco. They married a week later on Sept. 12, 1939.

Lena Mae bought a blue dress. Douglas wore his uniform.

She soon followed him to California. She was only 19.

"I planned to live wherever his ship was," she said. "Most the time, I didn't know what I was doing."

That plan took the couple to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

"I was thrilled to death," she said. The couple bought their first house there.

But then came their second test.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Douglas was sleeping late, having just gotten off his shift at midnight. Lena Mae heard booms in the distance.

"I looked towards the harbor and -- we were close - I could see planes," she said. "They were dropping bombs."

She woke Douglas, who groggily told her it was probably just a drill. "But there are things burning," Lena Mae insisted.

Before long, he was on a salvage ship headed for the USS Arizona, which had been hit. He was 100 yards out when it exploded. Enemy planes buzzed overhead.

Coming home

Lena Mae was evacuated into Honolulu.

She took the bus home the next day, hoping to find Douglas.

She got home, but he wasn't there.

The next day, she saw a dirty figure walking up the road. She broke into a sprint.

It was Douglas.

After the war, life settled down. The Eakers had four sons and she continued to follow her husband where he could find work. He held a string of jobs: grocer, carpenter and finally, a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control supervisor, where he retired decades later.

Over the years, there were challenges. Things came up. They thought about divorce. But they never wanted to really go through with it. "Forgive," Douglas said. "Love each other."

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren came, and everything just got sweeter.

Lena Mae still drives. Douglas used to watch "The Price Is Right," until Bob Barker left the show.

Now he does the crossword puzzle every day. Lena Mae whips him up a BLT, his favorite. They shop at Kroger Friday mornings.

When you ask a specific question, he looks to his wife.

"She can remember things I can't," Douglas explains.

When you ask for their life story, they give you the basics: We married, had four kids and ended up in Apex.