For years in their early twenties, Lily Hu and Kath Miller kept their love alive via monthly flights. Miller would fly a small plane from Oakland, where she worked as a flight mechanic, to Pasadena, where Hu worked as a computer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The couple first started dating in high school, and Lily wasn’t initially sure whether their relationship would last.

“I thought for sure she’d forget me,” Hu notes, laughing.

“I would never forget you,” Miller replies, putting her arm around her lifelong love.

This summer, they celebrate their fifty-third anniversary, although they like to debate about whether several years in the middle count. The couple’s commuting relationship went through some turbulent times in the early 1960s, when Miller focused on training for an experimental program to send women astronauts into space. Hu says she was able to weather the separation because she understood Miller’s dream. After all, Hu was part of the team responsible for building many of JPL’s robotic spacecraft, including Voyager.

“A mutual friend helped us find our way back to each other,” Hu says. The two reconnected in the mid-1960s, and Miller moved to Pasadena in 1968.

“We’ve been together ever since,” Miller says.

They bought a little house in Pasadena, and Miller launched a flight school at a local airport, where she continues to teach a few enthusiastic young pilots today during her retirement. Hu retired from JPL ten years ago after a long career first as a computer and then as an engineer, but she still keeps up with the space program through a network of JPL friends.

Hu says she and Miller never felt the urge to tie the knot before the Supreme Court decision this summer. “We had friends who had commitment ceremonies, but we didn’t feel like we needed it,” she says. “We were committed to each other privately, and it didn’t seem necessary until there were real legal reasons to do it.”

“I bought her a ring in 1969,” Miller says. “And she wore it, but we never made a big fuss about it.”

In early August, the couple held a small wedding ceremony in their own backyard, with just a dozen friends and family members in attendance. But the most meaningful part of the event, Hu says, was going to City Hall to get the marriage certificate.

“I feel recognized by my country,” Hu says. “I never dreamed this was possible when I was younger. I can’t describe how wonderful that feels.”