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Danette Duckworth wasn’t going to let death stand in the way of her long-standing love for the St. Louis Blues.

When she found out last fall that her cancer had come back and spread, she started telling her husband, Ken Duckworth, 61, her final wishes. She wanted to be buried in the jersey of her favorite player. Chuck Lefley, a forward for the Blues in the '70s and early '80s, gave Danette a hockey stick at a game when she was 18 years old. She cherished it her entire life.

Ken was determined to honor her dying wish. In November, the couple got a special Lefley jersey made with the number 25 on it.

Danette got to wear it once.

Ken and Danette both grew up in the small Missouri town of St. Clair, Mo. They became friends in high school when she was 16 and he was 15. She was the only girl Ken knew who subscribed to the Hockey Digest, the Baseball Digest, the Hockey News and Sporting News. He would read the magazines with her in study hall. One day she came over to his house and played table hockey with him.

"Of course, I beat her," he says.

Their friendship turned into something more following high school after Ken joined the Navy. They kept in touch through letters and saw each other on his visits home. On their first date, he took her to a Blues game.

“That night I lay in bed, and I knew I was going to marry that girl,” Ken says.

He did marry her on Sept. 6, 1980. They spent all their wedding money on Blues season tickets. They moved to South County, then Imperial and raised two daughters there. The family never missed a game — every preseason, regular season and postseason game. If they couldn’t go watch it live, they watched on television.