It takes a lot of things going right for a couple to reach 75 years of marriage. But for Nancy and Jerry Kettmann, who celebrated the rare milestone March 24, it was more than luck.

“I think our secret was when we got married we had goals, and we have always looked to the future,” Nancy Kettmann said. “But you have to have tenacity. We were always there for each other, but we had some rocky times, too.

“You learn to see the best in the other person. Everybody has faults, but you learn you don’t have to win an argument. You really don’t need to do that. You have to adapt to each other.”

In the summer of 1949, then 18-year-old Nancy Riveroll was a San Jose State student working at the Barron-Gray cannery, cutting the peel off apricots for the season. Gerard Kettmann — then just Jerry — was another Spartan working in the cannery, emptying buckets of slop.

“I was really impressed with him because he always wore a dress shirt in the cannery,” said Nancy Kettmann, who said she was a little disappointed when she saw him talking one day to a woman wearing an engagement ring and figured he was off the market. (He wasn’t.)

At the end of season party, several cannery workers offered to drive Nancy home. But she rebuffed them all, saying Jerry would be taking her home.

Of course, he didn’t know that.

“He didn’t even have a car,” she said. “That’s how our romance started.”

The romance led to a wedding at the Carmel mission in March 1950. After he graduated, Jerry Kettmann took his bride to Berkeley, where he went to law school and Nancy worked for Kaiser in Oakland. They eventually found their way back to San Jose, where Jerry Kettmann’s family first settled in the 1860s, and raised five children.

After working as a deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, Kettmann went into private practice before being appointed to the Municipal Court bench in 1968 — becoming more regularly and formally known as Judge Gerard J. Kettmann.

Last Saturday, the couple — wearing sashes, leis and regal crowns — were joined by about 50 family members for a 75th wedding anniversary party at the Villages, where they live. The celebration was largely driven by former Silicon Valley marketing professional Heather Kettmann, who is married to their son Dave, and lives close by.

For the Kettmanns — Nancy is 94 and Jerry is 98 — the highlight of the party was seeing everyone together.

“It was the most wonderful thing. We have these memories now because the party was totally filled with love,” Nancy Kettman said. “We’re still sort of basking in the glow.”

BOOK BASH >> Retired Cisco Systems engineer Steve Ricossa will be the guest of honor at Librarypalooza, the annual fundraiser for the Santa Clara City Library Foundation & Friends on Saturday at the Triton Museum of Art. Ricossa has been involved with the library and the foundation for nearly a decade, while also serving as a board member for the Mission City Community Fund and JW House at Kaiser Santa Clara.

The library foundation didn’t have to look too far for a guest speaker, either. That duty will be handled by Preston Metcalf, executive director and senior curator at the Triton, who is not only a seasoned art historian but also the host of the Triton Museum’s Book Club series, which is held the first Wednesday of the month and tackled Shakespeare’s tragic romance “Romeo & Juliet” for April.

Get more information on the 5 p.m. event at lovethelibrary.org/librarypalooza.

JUST FOOLIN’ AROUND >> It was refreshing to see some institutions in the San Jose area take part in the time-honored tradition — at least the past 10 years or so — of making an April Fool’s Day social media post. The Winchester Mystery House took the opportunity to tout its new “Winchester Water Park,” with a slide that emerges from the famous “Door to Nowhere”; the San Jose Police Department made a video announcing its new Scooter Division; and California’s Great America got a fun one in, posting a photo of its iconic Columbia carousel with four extra decks. The Santa Clara amusement park opens Saturday, by the way, so you can check out if it’s shrunk back to merely being a double-decker.

The San Jose Earthquakes’ April 1 post announced that the team would be bringing back its 1990s-era San Jose Clash nickname and logo, which for some unknown reason was a red scorpion. It turns out that wasn’t actually a joke; the team is honoring its inaugural season when it played the first game in Major League Soccer history, defeating D.C. United 1-0 at Spartan Stadium in 1996.

D.C. United will face the Clash, er, Quakes on Sunday at PayPal Park and there’ll be a halftime event honoring Eric Wynalda, John Doyle, Eddie Lewis, John Harkes, Jeff Agoos, Marco Etcheverry and other players from that first season. And who was the coach of D.C. United for that game? That’s right, current Quakes coach Bruce Arena. The first 5,000 fans will get an inaugural game rematch pennant, and there will be retro Clash merchandise in the team stores.

Contact Sal Pizarro at spizarro@bayareanewsgroup.com.