NATCHEZ — For Joe and Martha Rossignol, a lot has changed in their 40 years of marriage.

The couple has made a life for themselves in Bermuda.

Martha’s children, which Joe adopted as his own, have grown and have kids of their own.

Joe’s once long, fiery red hair has shortened considerably and lost its vibrancy.

And most importantly, they can now get married in the daytime wherever they please.

In November 1974, the couple did not have that luxury and felt they had to get married under the cover of darkness.

Martha is black and Joe is white. Even though interracial marriage was made legal throughout the United States in 1967 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled all anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, in Mississippi, it was extremely frowned upon and controversial.

“When we got married 40 years ago, we couldn’t share it with anybody,” Martha said.

All that were in attendance was a minister and another couple that worked for Joe.

That is why celebrating their marriage at the gazebo on the bluff in Natchez Wednesday, the exact spot they were first married, was so important.

“We can finally have that special day with our family and friends,” Martha said.

Martha and Joe met when they were both working for the New Deal grocery store in Fayette, where Martha is from. Joe was a manager and Martha was an employee.

There attraction was not immediate, but Joe was persistent.

“I had never seen a red headed white man, I said to others, ‘look at this fool with his hair dyed red,’” Martha said.

But she began to warm up to him, and the couple went on some dates.

“Each day, he always found a time at the grocery store to talk to me, and I guess he started to rub off on me,” Martha said.

After almost a year of courtship, they decided to get married.

“We were not trying to make any larger political statements,” Joe said. “We were just focused on each other.”

The next part was getting a marriage license.

“We didn’t know any other interracial couples, so we didn’t know where to go,” Joe said.

After trying several different counties, the Rossignol’s heard that they could not get refused a license in the county they resided in, which was Adams County at the time.

“We went to the courthouse, and there were two different ledgers — white and colored,” Martha said. “They didn’t know what to do with us. You went into the ledger as a couple. They didn’t want me in the white one, so they put us in the colored one.”

Marriage was another adventure fraught with daily discrimination, but Martha and Joe haven’t regretted it for a second.

The couple traveled back to Natchez to celebrate their vows, this time surrounded by plenty of family and friends on the bluff.

“After all this time, we are still very happy together,” Joe said.