GOOD OLD DAYS:

Morris Pivaroff could dance, and he had big blue eyes.

Lillian Mazacro was with another boy, who couldn’t dance, and was being chaperoned by her mother, when she met Pivaroff at a party in Los Angeles in 1935.

“He asked me to dance, and oh God, I just fell in love with him right then and there,” she said.

Morris Pivaroff said it was love at first sight for him, too, the minute he laid eyes on Mazacro.

Lillian Pivaroff is 89, and Morris Pivaroff is 92.

The Newport Beach couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on Nov. 19, but their storybook beginning almost didn’t make it to the altar.

Their mothers decided a few months before the scheduled wedding date that the couple’s cultural and religious differences just couldn’t be ignored.

The couple was young, respectful and didn’t want to hurt their families, so they ended their relationship.

“In those days, usually you married your own kind, that’s how they would explain it,” Lillian said.

Morris Pivaroff dated a Russian girl for a few months, while Lillian Mazacro sat home and nursed a broken heart.

Kathleen Kading teased her dad when she heard the story recently, saying she didn’t realize that after her parent’s breakup her dad had “gotten back in the action” so quickly.

“Well, here’s how he got back in the action,” Lillian said.

“He called me up after a couple of months and asked me if we got married and had children, if it would be all right if we raised them in his religion.”

Back together, the couple wasted no time, deciding to tie the knot at City Hall in Los Angeles.

They almost didn’t get married again.

“It was quitting time, near 5 o’clock,” Lillian said, and Morris had to come from work.

“We caught the last judge at City Hall. Just made it,” Morris said.

The couple and their three children made their home in Whittier, but the family vacationed every summer in Newport Beach beginning in 1960.

They would rent a home on Balboa Island for a few weeks or a month. Kading said the area was really different back then. It was quiet, and quaint, and Lillian remembers cleaner beaches, lighter traffic and water that was wonderful to swim in.

Lillian was also an avid fisherman back in the day.

She’d get up at 5 a.m. to fish off the pier at the Balboa Pavilion, often times staying out there until late at night.

Sometimes, her husband said he’d have to go down there and drag her home.

The Pivaroffs moved to Newport Beach in 1973, after Morris retired and the kids were grown.

They traveled extensively, square danced, and were always busy, Kading said.

They were involved at Oasis Senior Center for more than 25 years, playing cards or helping out by doing volunteer work.

On their 50th anniversary, in 1987, they had a party at the Balboa Bay Club, where they danced and renewed their vows.

Morris moved to an assisted-living facility a few weeks ago, and his wife visits every day.

When Morris talks about the love they’ve shared since that first dance, both immediately reach for each other’s hand and begin to cry.

“It’s a strange thing, but we’re married 70 years, and every year our love was stronger and stronger,” he said.

SUE THOENSEN may be reached at (714) 966-4627 or at sue.thoensen@latimes.com.