LUBEC, Maine — Kathleen Tarbell “fell head over my stomach” for her husband, Waldo, when they met at a dance. They married in 1927, during Calvin Coolidge’s presidency. This weekend, they’ll celebrate their 80th anniversary.

Mr. Tarbell is 101, and Mrs. Tarbell will turn 100 in June. The anniversary party will be Saturday afternoon at Oceanview Nursing Home, where the couple shares a large room.

Maine’s Office of Vital Records could not immediately determine if the Tarbells’ marriage is the longest in the state. The 2007 Guinness Book of World Records lists a Rhode Island couple wed for 83 years as having the longest marriage among living people.

Mrs. Tarbell, a native of Pembroke, moved to Mr. Tarbell’s hometown of Meddybemps after they married. Two years later, they moved to Pembroke, where their two children, Helen Brown and Elliot Tarbell, were born.

The couple lived in their home in Pembroke until a few weeks ago.

For 37 years, Mr. Tarbell worked for Maine Central Railroad, at a starting wage of 37 cents an hour. After their children were raised, Mrs. Tarbell worked for 32 years as a “herring choker and wrapper” at sardine factories.

“Sometimes, it’d be 10 o’clock at night before we’d get done. We’d go into work at eight in the morning. By the time we got home and got turned over in bed, it was time to get up again,” she recalled.

Mrs. Tarbell has been a Democrat her entire adult life. Mr. Tarbell, originally a Republican, turned Democrat. “She converted me,” he said. They remain up to speed on current events. Mrs. Tarbell reads the newspaper every day, and she thinks the war in Iraq is “scandalous.”

“Somebody ought to take Bush and wring his neck, and I might be the one to do it,” she said with a sparkle in her eye.