SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - When Marty first saw Bette, he was shooting hoops on a Brooklyn, New York playground.
"She's 15 and a fraction… (I) just graduated from high school, waiting to go into the service," Marty said. "I used to see her when she came by and made it my business to be there."
It took Marty six months to work up the courage to talk to the teenage redhead.
"If he worked it up any sooner, I'd be in the crib," Bette said.
Out of a few innocent schoolyard chats, love blossomed.
"We started by talking in the schoolyard. Finally after we talked, I said to him, 'When are you going to ask me out?'" Bette said.
A year later, the Fishers were engaged and the following year while Marty was serving in the Army Air Corps in Biloxi, Mississippi, he at age 22 and Bette not yet 18, married. Today, 70 years later, they are more in love than ever.
"This guy is so steady, so reliable, so there, all the time for me," Bette said.
"The beauties of life are in her smile," Marty said.
Not surprisingly, the couple credits communication and a sense of humor as the keys to marital bliss.
"Talk, even if you're tired of talking, even if you have to go to work the next day and you got no sleep, talk," Marty said.
"He's a man who smiles and laughs all the time, and I laugh with him," Bette said.
Life has given them two children and four grandchildren and a deep, almost spiritual devotion to one another.
"I would love it to continue yet for a while, I think so. It's been a great ride," Marty said.
70 years and counting, love's destiny is eternity.
