Nancy and Coleman Rogers pose for a photo while celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary at the Sea Glass restaurant at Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth on Tuesday. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Coleman and Nancy first met in their freshman-year Spanish class. They sat next to each other, and like any budding crush, Coleman would tease Nancy, and of course, flirt.

“I wasn’t sure about him at first,” Nancy said.

Coleman asked Nancy to go with him to a party that fall. Now, the Rogers are celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary. Their children surprised them with lunch at the Sea Glass restaurant on Tuesday, right down the street from the couple’s house.

It was a simple celebration, but sweet nonetheless. Nancy and Coleman Rogers sat side by side, cozied up to one another while they enjoyed the view and spent some quality time as a family. The pair was soft-spoken, but giggly, grinning ear to ear whenever they caught each other’s eye.

The couple settled in Cape Elizabeth in 1970 and have been there ever since. After long careers working at local schools, Nancy, 86, worked summers at the Candle Shack at Two Lights for 25 years, and 88-year-old Coleman is in his 19th year as a part-time park ranger at Fort Williams.

They couldn’t be happier to live in the Pine Tree State. Three generations of Rogers now live all over the country, but they, too, feel at home in Cape Elizabeth.

A LIFETIME IN MAINE

Coleman was born and raised in South Portland but left Maine to attend Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts, where he met Nancy. They were engaged by junior year. Nancy’s father wanted her to finish her degree, so their wedding was exactly one month after graduation.

They soon moved to the Chicago suburbs to start teaching jobs and later had two kids, Heidi and Troy. But Coleman wasn’t super fond of the area.

“He’s not a big city person,” Heidi Hepler said of her father.

After over a decade in noisy, busy Chicago, they were ready to leave. Coleman wanted to come home.

They found a house on Crescent View Avenue, where they could see the beach. It was perfect. And Cape offered better schools for their children. Nancy became a special education teacher in South Portland and Coleman started as a principal in Westbrook.

They were some of the first members of Cape Elizabeth Church of the Nazarene, which they still attend every Sunday. They said their faith is a large part of what has kept them together for so long.

Nancy said her mother taught her that when times get tough, “You pray first, then you do.”

Coleman and Nancy Rodgers celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary at Sea Glass restaurant in Cape Elizabeth. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

FAMILY FIRST

Troy Rogers and Heidi Hepler said their parents’ marriage, and emphasis on family, is inspiring.

Both moved away from Maine as young adults, but the Rogers’ home in Cape has always felt like home base. That was especially true for Hepler, whose husband, Keith, was in the Air Force and spent years moving around the country.

“My kids never had roots, and (my parents) provided that for them,” Hepler said tearfully.

Coleman and Nancy don’t go on as many excursions these days, but as they sat down at Sea Glass, they remembered some more extravagant anniversaries in years past.

For their 50th, Heidi said, her cousin hosted a big family reunion in Pittsburgh, where Nancy grew up. For their 60th, the whole family rented a house on a lake in Topsham for five days.

“It was lovely, a good time to be together,” Nancy said.

Nowadays, life at home is pretty quiet. They only really leave the house together to go to church, the grocery store, or Cracker Barrel, which Troy Rogers said is one of their favorites. Nancy spends her time cleaning the house and reading while Coleman still keeps busy, working at Fort Williams one or two days a week.

“He loves to talk to the people. He’s got so much history, growing up in the area,” Troy Rogers said.

Still, at this point in their life, the couple is simply happy to be together and live in “such a wonderful place,” Nancy said.

“I think they’d be lost without each other,” Troy Rogers said. “My mother says, ‘I just wish we could both die at the same time.’ It’s pretty amazing to see that type of relationship.”