"I first saw Evelyn at mass. She was this red-headed gal, three pews ahead,” Cecil Bindell says. “I told my friend Herbert, who was sitting next to me, ‘That’s gonna be my wife.’”

Seventy years later, Cecil, 90, and his wife Evelyn, 91, have weathered every storm, beaten the odds and stayed in love. Married in 1938, only three months after their first date, Cecil and Evelyn have seen gas prices rise from 5 cents a gallon to past $4. They’ve witnessed segregation in Seaside and the mobilization of the NAACP. They’ve raised nine children, all while keeping their love alive by putting one another first and sharing a commitment to community service.

“I remember thinking how cute he was,” smiles Evelyn. “On our first date, he took me to the carnival. Cecil made sure to take advantage of the Ferris wheel. You know it stops for a while at the top.

“When he asked me to marry him, I never thought it would be this long – I just knew that he was a good man and I wanted to get married.”

While today’s weddings involve designer dresses, elaborate parties and ridiculously priced honeymoons, Cecil and Evelyn made theirs happen for pennies. Evelyn sewed her own wedding dress and the duo honeymooned for $15 at a neighboring city’s hotel.

After tying the knot, the duo lived at Cecil’s house with his parents. Ten months later, they welcomed their first child, and continued to welcome a child into the world about every two years.To keep his family afloat, Cecil took jobs as a farmhand, tending cattle and growing crops. In 1944, he was drafted in the Navy and trained for more than a year despite back problems. On June 6, 1944, Cecil was sent to the dispensary to get medication for his back pain. After the examination, the attending doctor immediately wrote Cecil a discharge on account of his physical troubles. As Cecil walked out of the dispensary, the building erupted into sounds of jubilation – the war was over. “It was the best way to go,” Cecil chuckles.

“And I was so glad to have him back,” Evelyn adds.

She says their union survived much more on teamwork than flowers and fun. “We were never really romantic,” she says. “Cecil and I were in love; we always got along pretty well, but it takes a lot of cooperation to stay married. Each of us has duties, and when we made our wedding vows, we stuck by our promises. Not just to love, but to care for and provide. Sure there were tough times, but we worked together. Divorce was never, ever an option.”

While their home front was peaceful, trying times awaited in the 1960s. As the first white president of the Monterey NAACP, Cecil upped the membership from 35 to 1,000 members, 60 percent of them white, during his time with the organization. But while he and his colleagues worked for the eradication of racism, others were determined to stop the progress.

“I have had five or six death threats in my time with the NAACP,” Cecil says. “Once a man called the house to speak directly to me, warning me that he would kill me the next chance he got. I told him, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I love you and I’m praying for you.’”

The stranger hung up immediately, and no harm ever came to Cecil. Evelyn feared for their children’s safety but the couple remained steadfast in their civil rights efforts. Today they remain proud of helping install Seaside’s first black police officer and K-12 teacher.

“During those times people were just ignorant,” Evelyn says. “I think that people just need to get acquainted with others in order to eliminate discrimination. But we’ve come so far… Barack Obama is our next president! Can you believe it!?”

Their son David, a local retired real-estate mogul, tells the Weekly that though his parents and family are “historically Republican,” this time his mother pushed her 10-person, in-family voting block in a different direction.

“My mom wanted us to be informed,” he says. “She read both of Obama’s books, and would send [her children] articles about the direction he wanted to take our country. Because of her, we all voted Obama.”

As so much has changed around the couple, Evelyn insists their devotion to one another hasn’t. “In our many years, through the up and downs, we never asked ourselves if we were happy,” she says. “We did what we had to do.”

Cecil elaborates, saying: “Real love doesn’t mean constant pleasure – it means commitment. I loved Evelyn when I married her, and because our marriage was important to us, we worked to keep it alive. And I love her more than anything.”