"I don't know how he'd describe me. Could you find the words?" Liz Valdez asked.
If opposites attract, Liz and her husband, Juan, are like magnets.
"She's extroverted," Juan said.
The balance they find fuels their entrepreneurial side.
"We've chauffeured many people from the airport to downtown Naples, Port Royal area," Liz said. "It was a natural fit to say, hey, let's do some food tours. We have the transportation, and we have the knowledge."
The ups and downs of owning a small business in Bonita Springs are nothing compared to the battles they've fought before.
"These are some of the different operations: Operation Iraqi Freedom, I've been through the Suez Canal," Liz said as she showed off embroidered patches from her time in the Navy on her DIY jean jacket.
Liz met Juan while they both trained in the Navy in 2002.
Their friendship grew into more aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.
"We were deployed to the Persian Gulf during active wartime, and I remember we did a lot of drills," Liz said. "He was kind and considerate, and safe, and I needed that."
Their shared experience and support carries on today, post service.
"He actually tried to throw away all of his Navy memorabilia because when you've been in for four years and at that point, you've decided you're done. You just want to be 'done done,'" Liz said.
However, she would not throw away Juan's greatest accomplishment: a Navy achievement medal he earned after making a critical repair aboard his ship in service. It was a repair expected to take months that Juan fixed in a matter of hours.
"I didn't understand the magnitude of it until actually I got out of the service," Juan said.
It's a love story on the high seas that continues to weather any storm.
"When you're married to someone for 20 years, and your life started during war, on an aircraft carrier, I don't know," Liz said. "There's just this-- we'll always have that."