MELBOURNE, Fla. — Some couples may see 25 years of marriage; others’ unions last for 50 years.

But one Melbourne couple recently marked a rare marriage milestone — 75 years.

“He depends on me,” Doris Shope said. “God has given us each other, so we do things together.”

Doris met her husband, Maynard “Bud” Shope, after he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 17, picking up an honorary high school diploma to don a uniform faster, and served in World War II.

Both worked in a factory in Ohio; Doris was a clerk in the receiving department, while Bud was a welder, employing skills he had learned during the war.

“When I saw her, I’ll tell you what. She was beautiful!” he recalled with a smile.

“Back in those years, they called a flirty kind of guy a ‘wolf',” she said. “He was a wolf. And curiosity killed the cat, and here I am.”

The couple married and had seven children. Decades later, the manufacturing director and his wife retired to Florida as their children scattered around the country, raising their own families from South Carolina and Virginia, to Ohio and Texas.

The couple now has 13 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren — and four great-great-grandchildren.

And while Bud was recently placed on hospice after a series of debilitating strokes over the course of more than 25 years, the couple still works on monthly projects together. For instance, each month they send postcards to homebound church members: Bud, now 96, prints and affixes labels, and Doris, 94, pens cheerful messages.

“We have to enjoy each other for as long as we have left,” Doris said. “I’m a weeper, so you don’t want to go there. We made vows — love, honor and cherish each other until death parts us. It’s because of God’s grace that we are still here.”