Marie Filosa likes to joke when asked about the key to her long and successful marriage to her husband, Louis.

"People always ask me, 'How do you do it?' and I just say, 'I don't listen to him anymore,'" she said, laughing.

To say the Filosas know a thing or two about maintaining a healthy marriage would be putting it mildly; last month, the Dyer couple celebrated their 65th anniversary.

The Filosas, who were raised in the Big Apple, first met the mid-1930s at a church dance when they were barely in their teens. Their first night together proved to be a success, as the pair won a dance contest.

"I took a liking to her the first time I met her," Louis Filosa said.

"Everybody there liked him, so I said 'I'm going to grab him first,'" his wife added.

The young couple, however, had a roadblock or two to deal with in their early years together.

"We had to see each other without our mothers knowing about it," Louis Filosa said.

"Because we were so young, they didn't want us to go out together, so we had to sneak around to see each other."

In January 1943, Louis enlisted in the Army. Unsure of where that road would take him at the height of World War II, Louis, who was 20 at the time, and Marie, then 19, made their way to Baltimore, where they eloped on Jan. 21, the day before Louis reported for duty.

The couple chose Baltimore, Louis Filosa said, because it was the closest city to them where a couple could be married immediately and without a set grace period. In New York and other surrounding states, couples at the time had to wait up to 72 hours by law before they could exchange their vows.

Expecting a ceremony presided over by a judge or clerk, the young couple wound up in a cathedral, where the cardinal of Baltimore oversaw their nuptials and members of the cathedral's cleaning crew served as their best man and maid of honor.

"The only priest that was available at the time was the cardinal," Louis recalled, "and the only reason that he married us so quickly was because I was going into the service the next day."

Louis Filosa returned to New York City after being stationed in Virginia during the war and was a police officer in New York City for 35 years. His wife stayed at home to rear their two sons, Louis and John.

After Louis retired in 1984, they followed their eldest son Louis, a chemical engineer who lives in Mokena, to the region, settling in Dyer.

"Being that my wife is of Italian extraction, she wanted to be near my son and our grandchildren, and that's why we moved out here," Louis Filosa said.

"And I'm glad that we did, because I found that the people out here were so nice."

For their golden anniversary in 1993, the Filosas finally celebrated the occasion properly with family and friends.

"We had a priest (re)marry us, and our son gave us a real wedding," Louis said.

"He rented us a hall and we had quite a few people there and everything -- we did it right that time."