White told him she didn't need a diamond on her finger to prove their love would last. Early on, it just seemed like a given.

The two met 25 years ago when she moved into a Punchbowl apartment. She lived on the fifth floor and Cupp lived on the sixth. Soon they were inseparable.

"I basically lived at his place, and my place was an enormous closet," she said. "We lived together like we were married."

They'd spend weekends water skiing or sport shooting, and they'd celebrate holidays together. But tying the knot was never a priority. Cupp would just joke about rings.

"We got to live and grow together," White said. "There was no sudden change in our lives. We just evolved."

Cupp's blond hair grayed, and he was meticulous about the short beard he wore in his later years. White, a tall and lanky administrator and researcher at the University of Hawai'i, would watch her companion putter around their apartment building when he retired from his sales job to become resident manager. She loved the way he would engage in conversation with everyone and make life comfortable.

She thought she knew what to expect from him, like the way every Christmas he would hang earrings on the tree for her.

But Cupp, a Roosevelt High grad and member of the Intruders Motorcycle Club, was still full of surprises.

At Christmas 2002, he stopped joking around and hung a real engagement ring in a box on the tree.

"Don't you think it's time?" he asked. She said yes.

They laughed that they would wait another 20 years before saying their vows.

With the proposal itself, Cupp must have sensed he was running out of time, because, as fate would have it, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that spread quickly.

In the spring of 2003, they married in a civil ceremony and had a reception a couple of months later at Ko'olau Golf Club so all of their friends could help celebrate their many years together.

Cupp died June 20, 2003.

He was 65. His loved ones scattered his ashes at Kawaiku'i Beach Park across from Hawai'i Loa Ridge.

This month, shortly before Valentine's Day, Affordable Caskets and Moanalua Mortuary presented White with Cupp's last gift to her: another gem.

Before he died, Cupp saw an ad for Life Gems, a company that uses carbon from a loved one's remains and turns it into a diamond.

"That's what I want" he told his wife.

White hadn't cared about diamonds in the past, but now she is deciding whether to make the stone into a bracelet, necklace or the kind of ring they might have joked about.

"I think it's perfect," she said. "It's blue. Chad wanted blue. It was his favorite color."

When she speaks of her late husband, White sounds like a woman in love. She said Cupp was a precious jewel in her life, and he still is.

"This was a man who loved so many people, and he loved me especially," she said. "I miss him every day. But I feel how lucky I am every day that I had 25 years with him."