GOOD OLD DAYS:

Every time Stuart McKenzie tells someone he met his wife, Pat, on a blind date in college, she gets mad.

“Well, we did meet on a blind date,” Stu said. “It’s just that I was the one who had the blind date, not Pat.”

Stu was out with a girl he can’t remember much about, he said, and Pat was dating one of his fraternity brothers. The three couples at the dance were part of a “triple date,” and Stu was smitten with the girl he describes as “a very pretty blond who had a lot on the ball.”

He decided he wanted to try to date her himself, and he said it took a few “tries” before he and Pat went on their own first date on April 5, 1941.

While Stu is confident that from that point on, he and Pat were in love, he also admits it took his future bride a while to give up the other guy.

“She had to decide that I was a better choice. I never did think that was a difficult choice,” he said.

Pat doesn’t think it was a difficult choice either, despite her being a Beverly Hills High School student who always said she’d never date a boy who went to Hollywood High.

Six months later, Stu and Pat were pinned, and they married Jan. 16, 1943.

The 87-year-old couple celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in January, and two weeks ago, more than 50 McKenzie family members gathered for a post-anniversary party/ family reunion at son Terry’s house on the Balboa Peninsula.

That house is right around the corner from the first house Stu and Pat purchased for $9,500 on West Balboa Boulevard in 1955.

The McKenzies owned a home in Los Angeles, but after they bought the Balboa house they drove down with their three boys in their Woody station wagon to spend summers at the beach.

Stu and Pat gave their first Balboa Island house to Terry and his wife in 1972 and purchased the house they live in today on West Bay Avenue.

The couple walked three miles on the Island every day for 28 years, Stu said, and were a fixture down on Ocean Avenue.

“We never made a lot of money, but we were happy, and Pat and I always did things together.”

The most together thing Stu and Pat did over the years, though, was travel and kiss. At every place they visited, Stu took a picture of himself planting one on his beautiful bride.

He recently compiled a CD of the 80 or more kissing pictures they’d taken, and said it was fun to see where he and Pat had been and how things had changed over the years.

“Our first kiss was in Lake Arrowhead in 1942. From then on, you can see how all the styles changed by the clothes you have on. We’re getting smaller and the kids are getting bigger,” Stu said.

Terry McKenzie said his parents set the standard for what a marriage is supposed to be like.

“They’ve always had a mutual respect for each other,” he said. That’s something that my brothers and I took with us into friendships and relationships.”

“Once you find a soul mate, you don’t need to look for something else,” Terry said.

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