During the weekend Ken Gardner and his partner Ken Britt celebrated their 59th anniversary – and what better way to celebrate than with a photo shoot to mark the couple’s time together.

Gardner, 89, and Britt, 81, posed for the cover of the Gay & Lesbian Times this week, photographed by “Big” Mike Phillips, who the couple met at Bourbon Street in University Heights years ago.

“They would come in every Wednesday to play bingo with Nicole [Murray-Ramirez],” Phillips says. “They would come in and have a beer with me right before I’d leave, and they’d play bingo. How amazing is that? How many people in society, gay or straight, stay together 59 years? And to be gay and have been together for 59 years, can you imagine – they’ve seen so much of the civil rights change, and their rights change. Kids today don’t realize how hard they had to fight, and that they had to hide – everything they’ve been through.”

The pair has shared their ups and downs during the last six decades.

They met during breakfast while Britt was enlisted in the Navy. They exchanged contact information, and Gardner began writing letters to Britt, who was stationed in Long Beach.

Gardner, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, was living in Hollywood at the time. Britt began visiting Gardner and the two formed a bond. Britt was shipped off to the Korean War shortly after.

“We exchanged letters and kept on while he was away,” Gardner says.

When Britt returned, the two moved in together. Though they never came out to family members their love continued to grow. They quarreled on occasion, Gardner says, but love triumphed.

The couple’s friends and people the couple encounters always ask the same question: how do you make it work for 59 years?

“I don’t know … it’s just there. I suppose some people don’t settle down,” Gardner says. “As a matter of fact, a friend of ours, a good friend of ours, seems to have gone around for years and still hasn’t settled down.”

But what is the key to Gardner and Britt’s long-lasting love? Perhaps it’s in the sentiment Gardner shares: “I can’t imagine anyone else,” he says. “I wouldn’t give him up for anything.”