When Louis Wetering met Doris Navas at a party in 2001, he knew right away.

“He said to me that he saw me and he just knew that I was the woman he wanted to be with,” Navas remembered. But she wasn’t so sure. “I didn’t want a relationship,” she said. But she gave in and went on one date. Then another, and another. Thirteen years later, they were still together.

They lived in Astoria but traveled often to the ocean. “He loved the water,” Navas said. “We would go to Montauk together and see the sunset.” Wetering was an avid fisherman.

He also had a sharp sense of humor and, when he laughed, his blue eyes had a mischievous sparkle. “He was a smart ass but I loved that about him,” Navas said. He had been battling cirrhosis of the liver, but his health had been improving in the months before he died. “He was a wonderful person, full of life.”

Navas said she turned down marriage proposals from Wetering for years, but had finally accepted. “He won me. He just never stopped,” she said. In the weeks before his death, they had been looking at wedding rings. “I wanted to grow old with him.”