Love | Trish McClellan & Nancy Groff

The love story of Trish McClellan and Nancy Groff appeared in these pages in the spring of 2000, when they were united in a commitment ceremony. Four years later, when it became possible for them to register with the State of New Jersey as domestic partners, they did that.

And last month, when New Jersey allowed same-sex couples to be joined in civil unions for the first time, Trish, 52, and Nancy, 57, signed on for that designation, too.

"Committed, partnered, united - in a way I don't care what they call it," Nancy said in a recent interview at the couple's Gloucester Township home. "It is what it is."

It is a relationship eight years old and rooted in love - framed and expressed every day in large and small acts of devotion. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

Trish was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma in 2003 and endured months of chemotherapy. Nancy's mother, father and brother all died in the last few years.

And Nancy, who previously relied on a walker because she suffered a debilitating spinal-cord illness, is now unable to stand or walk.

When they met, Nancy was a technical writer on contract with a pharmaceutical firm and Trish was a consultant to child care and Head Start administrators. They pooled their skills to collaborate on a print-on-demand compliance manual still seen as the gold standard.

They talk of those times now, their admiration for each other rising to the surface. But they live in the now and enjoy each day for what it is.

Trish says she prefers taking care of Nancy to thinking about her own brush with cancer. She maneuvers a machine called a Hoyer lift to move Nancy from her bed to what she laughingly calls "my electric chair" to the bathroom, which had to be renovated in stages as Nancy grew to accept her body's limitations.

They both see themselves as caretakers for an 88-year-old friend who lives in a connected apartment upstairs. She has had cataract surgery, knee replacements, high blood pressure, and a touch of senility, but Nancy likes to joke that their friend Jennie Rhoads is the "healthiest one in the house."

Trish and Nancy closely followed the political debate that led New Jersey, like Vermont and Connecticut, to permit civil unions. (Massachusetts is the only state to call same-sex unions marriage.)

On the first possible day, Feb. 20, Trish and Nancy applied for a license, paying the same $28 other couples are charged. And as soon as the required 72-hour waiting period elapsed, they held the ceremony.

Gloucester Township Mayor Cindy Rau-Hatton officiated in the municipal building. Nancy sat and Trish stood under a wooden trellis-on-wheels the township offers all couples.

They held hands and repeated after the mayor words almost identical to those used in marriage ceremonies.

Nancy gave Trish a ring that had been her mother's. When the ceremony was over, the entourage of witnesses and well-wishers made its way to the handicapped-accessible van Trish drives.

Trish pulled out a cardboard sign bearing the words "Just Unioned" in rainbow colors, and tied it to the rear windshield wiper of the van. The couple posed for pictures.

It was the same sign they used in 2000, tied then to Nancy's walker.

"I'm grateful we can have a civil union in New Jersey," Trish says. "But we drive across the bridge to Pennsylvania and what are we there?"

Under federal law, they don't have the protections granted to opposite-sex married couples. They can't file a joint federal income tax return, or receive Social Security benefits when one partner dies, not even the $225 that Social Security allots for funerals.

"I hope I live long enough to marry her the ultimate time," Nancy says, "to get federal rights." And she believes that will happen.

"Eventually," she says, "right will reign."