Des and Mae Pepin were headed to their formal wedding breakfast 65 years ago when they decided to take a Dairy Queen detour.

On May 12, 1951, the couple stopped for vanilla soft-serve cones at a Dairy Queen on Larpenteur Avenue after getting married at Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Maplewood.

“On the way there, we decided we would have our own official wedding breakfast,” said Des Pepin, 89, of Stillwater.

Friends took a photo of them with their cones in the back of their 1951 red Studebaker convertible.

Des, a retired state trooper, and Mae, 85, decided to re-create the photo — complete with a rented silver 2016 Ford Mustang convertible — on their 65th wedding anniversary last week. This time, they went to the Stillwater Dairy Queen.

“It was my wife’s idea,” he said.

The secret to a long marriage?

“Keep loving each other,” Mae Pepin said.

Said Des: “I’ll go along with that. Must be it.”