East Hampton couple Julia and Leroy Kayser to celebrate 80th wedding anniversary

Julia Teitler was 16 years old and Leroy Kayser was 18 when the couple sneaked down to Maryland to wed.

“We were underage. We eloped,” Leroy recalled Friday about heading — unknown to their parents — from New York to a more permissive state. He added: “We were very young, and broke.”

Now 96 and 98 and living in East Hampton, Julia and Leroy Kayser are celebrating their 80th wedding anniversary on Monday, still living as they have since 1944: together.

They met in spring 1941 on the same block in Coney Island, Brooklyn — West First Street, near Mermaid Avenue — a few houses apart, where they grew up.

“We were just kids. And somehow we fell in love,” Julia chuckled.

Only one-tenth of 1 percent of married adults in the U.S. — 0.12% — have been married for at least 70 years, according to Susan L. Brown, a distinguished professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and co-director of the National Center for Family & Marriage Research.

For those over 70 who are married, about half have been married for at least 50 years, she said.

World War II was raging when the two married: Leroy was in the merchant fleet, working in an engine room of a troop carrier; Julia had gotten a job soldering telephone wires for Navy ships.

“She was like Rosie the Riveter,” Leroy said.

No honeymoon, he said. “We just went back to work.” 

Their respective parents hadn’t known about the marriage plans — and didn’t really approve.

“They accepted it. But grudgingly,” he said.

Why?

“Because of our age. We had no apartment. We had no money. No house or nothing. Almost like vagabonds,” he said. “But they all came to accept it and love each other.”

The young couple found a small apartment, about $18 per month, where they shared a bathroom with strangers. They lived there about a year before finding a better place, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

They had their first child, a boy, Kenneth, in 1950, followed by a daughter, Laura, in 1953. The couple are now grandparents of two grandkids and great-grandparents to two others.

Their daughter, Laura Leitner, 70, of Northport, said the times they grew up in shaped their relationship.

“They had that bond of living through the Depression, living through World War II and sacrificing, and they always made a point of being appreciative of what they have,” she said.

They never dated anyone else. Over the years, the couple’s marriage has grown ever stronger.

“We realized that we were made for each other, if I could coin that phrase,” Leroy said. “And it went without saying that we were going to stay together and face life together. It was, like, understood more than actually spoken. The communication between us was a given.”

Julia interjected: “We never thought of not being together.”

What’s the secret to a good marriage?

“We believe in the old Johnny Mercer song, ‘Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.’ Look for each other’s good qualities, which I think are quite a few, and we try to minimize, if not eliminate, what we consider to be unpleasant qualities,” he said.

And no name-calling.

That doesn’t mean they never argue (“We’ve had our ups and downs, like most people,” Julia said) — or that they do everything together.

“I was something of an outside person, where Leroy was content to be by himself,” she said.

Before the pandemic, she did work with the League of Women Voters, served lunch at a local senior center and was involved with the Jewish women's organization Hadassah.

She does a lot less of those activities nowadays because age has limited her ability to drive. Leroy went legally blind about three years ago, due to macular degeneration. The two listen to audiobooks together. A recent choice: Michelle Obama’s memoir.

They work together outside, raking leaves and twigs, keeping healthy. She still cooks.

One of the foibles of living a long life is seeing older people, and even contemporaries, die first, Leroy said. Acquaintances, siblings, friends, aunts and “everybody else,” Leroy said.

“Sooner or later,” he said, “we’ll lose ourselves.”

Julia chuckled.

“We're the only ones left,” she said Sunday.

It’s been decades since the two retired to the East End from Brooklyn, where he worked as a systems analyst for Federated Department Stores, at the old A&S, in the downtown part of the borough. She was in charge of the grand jury clerk’s office for the district attorney, just blocks away. The two would ride the subway, but Julia would take an earlier train, because she had to work earlier than her husband.  

So would the couple spend lunchtime together?

“No,” Julia laughed. “We had our own friends.”

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.