VANCOUVER, Wash. -- It's a love story that started in the 1950s.
"I don't know why I picked him, he was cute." Marlene Schell says as she sits next to her boyfriend, Mike Johnson in their Vancouver home.
Mike was smitten too at first sight.
"Here was this good looking girl on the other side of the fence that looked interesting to me so that's why I went out and tapped her on the shoulder," he said.
They first met at the dog races here in Portland. They were both 17. After dating for a little over a year, they went their separate ways and started their own lives.
Mike joined the Army, graduated college and married his wife Donna. They were married for 50 years.
At the same time that Mike was living his life, Marlene was living hers. She married her husband Doyle and opened a dance studio, The Schell School of Dance.
"I taught tap, jazz, ballet, acrobatic dance, my entire life was dance classes, piano classes," Marlene said.
She also helped choreograph the Miss Washington Pageant for 25 years. But when the music stopped, the dance changed.
Mike and his wife Donna got some unsettling news: Donna had cancer.
"Once it was discovered, it was already a stage 4 and there wasn't a lot they could do," Mike said.
Marlene and Doyle got the same news.
"We always thought it would be a diabetes that would take him, but when they gave the cancer diagnosis, I think he was a little angry." Marlene said.
After Donna passed, Mike went to live down at his home in Arizona. That's when he heard about the passing of Marlene's husband and gave her a call.
Mike wanted to get lunch and offer his condolences. That spark 60 from years ago, reignited.
"You know how sometimes when you can't think of something to say, you feel tension. What can I talk about? That wasn't there. That just wasn't there. It's like I had known him forever."
Now 60 years later, they have both found each other and love again.