When asked the secret to wedded bliss, Don Pembleton takes his time thinking of an answer.

As he and his wife Lela get ready to celebrate their 75th — yes, you read that right, their 75th — anniversary, nothing happens quite as quickly as it used to. Then again, it doesn’t need to.

The London couple, parents to one son, two living grandchildren (another has died) and three great-grandkids, has earned the right to move at their own pace toward a marital landmark that rivals the average Canadian’s lifespan.

“We had a wonderful life together,” Don reflected this week.

“The wife and I, we worked together.”

They were born a month apart in 1919 — she just outside Saskatoon, and he on a farm between Thedford and Forest.

At 19, times were tough in the Prairies so Lela headed to Ontario for work — go east, young woman — and wound up one evening at an Ipperwash Beach dance hall owned by Don’s parents.

That was the first step on the journey that’s lasted three-quarters of a century.

“She came down here to make a living,” Don recalls, sitting in the room they share at ­London’s ­Kensington Village nursing home.

“She was going to go back home and then she met me and that changed everything.”

He found work at Emco on Dundas St., where he stayed for 42 years (their son, Keith, now in his 70s, worked there for four decades, too). Lela didn’t work outside the home, and the family lived just outside Hyde Park.

Kensington Village has two halves, a retirement home and a nursing home that offers more assistance. The pair moved here a few years back but just last month shifted to the ­nursing side as Lela’s health required.

It’s a nice-looking place, and allows the Pembletons, both 94, to still live together.

It will also be the site of an open house to celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary Jan. 10.

They don’t want any gifts — “best wishes only please,” reads a classified ad placed inThe Free Press — and will welcome guests between 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.

It’s a sure bet they’ll be asked by at least a few visitors for the secret to a long marriage. Don isn’t sure there is any one thing, though having a well-behaved child, solid finances and good health surely helped.

For Lela, the answer is simple.

“What’s the use of fighting? We get along,” she says.

“I love him. I love him. I always have.”

Patrick.maloney@sunmedia.ca

Twitter.com/patatLFPress