On Aug. 1, the first day same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota, St. Paul residents Joe O’Brien and Ramon Granda went to City Hall and got hitched.

But if they sound like a couple of lovesick kids who caused their friends to shake their heads and wonder “Are they rushing things?” or “Will it last?,” maybe you should know that O’Brien is 82 and Granda is 83.

They had been a couple for 53 years before they finally made it legal. It is their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple in more than five decades together.

So while O’Brien and Granda aren’t exactly blushing newlyweds still in their honeymoon period, their long, long engagement is a powerful example of a pair that knows what togetherness means.

They were also co-workers and business partners who ran a restaurant together for nearly 40 years, rarely spending a minute apart.

“I have never known Ray without Joe or Joe without Ray,” said Tara O’Brien, Joe’s niece. “Being together that much and that often normally tears people apart, but for them, it brought them together.”

The two met in Chicago. O’Brien, who was born and grew up in St. Paul’s West Seventh neighborhood, moved there to train as a chef and eventually worked at the Drake Hotel.

“All my life, I’ve always been interested in food and cooking,” he said.

Granda also had a background in food, working in family businesses while growing up in Joliet, Ill. His grandparents had a bakery and grocery store, and his parents ran a tavern.

“I started baking at the age of 5,” Granda said.

After a stint in the Army serving in Japan and South Korea, Granda returned to Chicago and ended up living in the same apartment building as O’Brien.

“We met as neighbors,” O’Brien said.

The date was July 14, 1960.

“It was in the hallway where we lived. We just started chumming around with each other,” Granda said. “It wasn’t difficult at all.”

O’Brien wanted to start a restaurant and was considering moving back to St. Paul to do it. But after he and Granda met, they decided to turn the vacant building that housed the grocery store owned by Granda’s grandparents into a restaurant.

The Continental Pantry & House of Fine Cakes opened in Joliet in 1962 with a dining room in the basement and a gift shop and pastry shop on the first floor. O’Brien was the chef; Granda was the baker.

“Looking for dining excitement?” was the motto they used in their newspaper ads.

The restaurant specialized in such Old World European dishes as Polish pot roast, Dublin corned beef hash, Heidelberg schnitzel and Hindenburg bratwurst.

O’Brien said he was inspired by the food of his youth. Of Hungarian and Irish descent, he grew up in a St. Paul neighborhood with lots of Czech families.

For 20 years, the two worked side by side at the restaurant, 6 1/2 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day.

“We had no life,” O’Brien said. “Our customers became our life.”

But when a highway project took away the parking for the restaurant, the couple decided to relocate — and loaded up 10 26-foot moving vans with food, kitchen equipment, fixtures, dining room furniture and decorations.

“We took everything except the paint off the walls,” Granda said in a Pioneer Press article.

Everything was moved into a space at the Czech Hall on West Seventh in St. Paul, not far from where O’Brien grew up. By December 1982, the Continental Pantry & House of Fine Cakes was again open for business.

Reviews of the restaurant in the Pioneer Press described it as “one of the wackiest and most wonderful places around.” There were flags of every country of Europe, and a mural of Prague painted by O’Brien dominated one wall. The dining room was simultaneously spotless and jammed full of Christmas decorations. The restaurant proudly displayed the health inspector’s report on the front door.

The business was essentially a two-man operation — O’Brien in the kitchen and Granda waiting tables. After a long day at work, the couple went home to an apartment next to the restaurant.

All that togetherness wasn’t always easy.

“The business was very stressful,” O’Brien said. “You’re working in the kitchen, and there’s all these knives around.”

“Somehow we always managed to come out smiling at the end of the day,” O’Brien said.

They joke that they stayed together for the dogs. For the past half century, the couple kept a series of dachshunds with names like Heidi, Helga and Greta, plus the occasional Doberman and German shepherd.

They kept the restaurant until 1999. The location is now the Glockenspiel restaurant.

For a while, O’Brien worked as the head baker for the Science Museum of Minnesota, and Granda got a job at the University Club on Summit Hill as a banquet captain and host.

O’Brien now works part time at the University Club doing coat checks for weekend events.

“It helps to keep me active,” O’Brien said.

“It’s because I don’t want him to be here 24 hours a day,” Granda said.

The pair now live in a house on the West Side with Molly and Sally, a dachshund and a dachshund-rat terrier mix. They regularly entertain dinner guests and bake cakes for friends, neighbors and special occasions.

And last year they decided to get married. After more than 50 years together, maybe you can’t blame them for a nonchalant proposal.

“I just asked him. I said well, ‘Do you want to get married?’ as soon as they were talking about passing the law,” Granda said. “He said, ‘It’s up to you.’ ”

“There were no prenups,” O’Brien said.

“To me, it was just going to be another day. I didn’t dress up that much,” O’Brien said of the ceremony Aug. 1 at St. Paul’s city hall before Ramsey County District Court Chief Judge Teresa Warner.

But neighbor Amy Lengsfeld, who was one of the witnesses as the wedding, said even after 53 years together, being married did make a difference to the two men.

“You could hear it in their voices, and see it in their faces,” she said. “Finally society recognized what they’ve always known.”

“Ray, I do, I do, I do, a million times over,” O’Brien said at the ceremony.

“I love and cherish you Joe, for the rest of my life,” Granda said.

“They were both in tears,” Tara O’Brien said. “I think it was something they thought would never happen for them.”

“They’re certainly an example of commitment and love and everything that’s good in a relationship,” Lengsfeld said.

O’Brien and Granda have told friends and former customers of their marriage. Some of them didn’t know they were a couple.

“We never knew they were partners that way,” said friend Faith Schway. “We knew they lived together and were business partners. I almost fell off my chair.”

O’Brien said he’s been discreet about his sexual orientation because he came of age in an era when it wasn’t easy being gay.

“When you’ve lived your life secretly, it’s not easy to just open up and say who you are,” he said. “It was something you didn’t discuss with people. Little by little, it’s getting easier.”

Now he marvels at how much attitudes have changed.

“So much has happened this year, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “In all the years we’ve lived together, we’ve seen so much history in our lives.”

Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560. Follow him at twitter.com/RRChin.