Food is love. The expression may be trite, but that’s probably because it’s (often) true. This goes for duchesses — Prince Harry is said to have proposed marriage to Meghan Markle while she was roasting a chicken — and for many of us non-royals, too.

For Valentine’s Day, we asked three Maine couples to tell us about the foods that are meaningful in their own relationships.

THESE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES TELL THE TALE OF A LIFE TOGETHER

Nola Urban first baked chocolate chip cookies for the man who would become her husband in 1983. She was visiting him in Vermont, where he helped farmers breed cows through artificial insemination, “the grossest job I’ve ever seen anybody do,” Nola said.

A few years earlier, they’d gone on a date that went nowhere. At the time, Nola was in college and Rick, just back from the Marines, was a little aimless. “I had my eyes set on the future, and he’s like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,'” Nola said. “It wasn’t the right time.”

Two years passed. He enrolled in school to study animal science. One day, he wrote her a letter out of the blue. He got her address from his sister-in-law, who’d been Nola’s college roommate. “Don’t expect a lot,” she warned Rick.

Nola gave him a second chance.

The Urbans married in 1985. Today, they live in the same house on the same quiet, one-block, dead-end street in Portland where they moved as a young couple. In 2011, Rick retired from 26 years in the South Portland Fire Department. Nola retired a little later from a career teaching math. Their daughters are grown, their grandchildren are headed that way, and, with luck, they’ll celebrate their 41st anniversary this spring as they usually do — having drinks and watching the sunset from the Top of the East.

Over the decades, the cookies — the recipe is the classic printed on the bag of chocolate chips — have waxed and waned in their lives. She’s the baker in the family and she can recite the recipe from memory. After Rick retired, she recruited him to stir. He’s a big, athletic guy, and the dough is stiff.

The Urbans stock their freezer with Ziplock sandwich bags of the soft, evenly sized cookies, six to a bag. They give away plenty, to the mail carrier, the trashman, the neighbors, Nola’s book club. Rick, who has a sweet tooth, has been known to take a bag from the freezer and eat all six cookies in one go — to be fair, they’re small.

But their marriage hasn’t been all about domesticity. Over the years, the Urbans have shared plenty of adventures. The summer after they got engaged, they rode their bikes 1,000 miles around New England. In 2012, they rode a tandem bike from Maine to Indiana to visit their daughter and grandchildren. Ten years later, they made a seven-month trek all around America in their motor home, making stops in Florida, Arizona and Alaska.

Two years ago, Nola noticed Rick was listing to the left. He fell off his bike. He had headaches. Glioblastoma, the doctor told them, an aggressive brain cancer.

The disease has affected his vision, his balance, his energy. Recently, he and Nola went out to dinner in the neighborhood at Maria’s Ristorante. “We sat there for two hours having a wonderful conversation with our friends,” Nola said, “and when we went to stand up, he had a real hard time getting his feet underneath him.”

He’s on hospice now. He hopes to make it past March 22, the day his parents died, two years apart. He wants to celebrate April 13, their anniversary, and a week later, his birthday. Meanwhile, he still cooks; he’s cooked the family dinner for much of their marriage. “It’s just a matter of taking a lot more time to do things,” he said. “I have to really concentrate.”

He’s also held onto his role as Stirrer of the Chocolate Chip Cookie Batter, although it’s harder than it used to be, Nola said. Without Rick, she expects to bake fewer cookies.

“I’ve actually given it some thought,” she said. “I’m a real planner. I’ve thought about, what will I cook for myself when he’s gone because cooking for one isn’t the same as cooking for two. I don’t know. There are so many things I can say, ‘I’m going to do that,’ but ‘will I do it?’ is the other half of the question.”

Rick’s mind is sharp. He still looks vital, like the firefighter he was, and he’s as funny and as nice a guy as ever. A while back, in an earlier phase of his illness, on a day they were feeling cranky and out of sorts, Nola and Rick had a heart-to-heart about how to face his diagnosis.

“Let’s choose happy,” they decided.

SHARING A SOULMATE’S PEANUT BUSTER PARFAIT

When Mary Anne Hildreth and Michael Lyons have a rough day, they know just what to do. They drive to the local Dairy Queen in North Windham and share a Peanut Buster Parfait.

“It’s just a fun one anytime we need a little uplift,” Mary Anne said. The couple, who live on Sebago Lake in Standish, have known each other for 40 years, and been together for 22 of those. They plan to marry this summer (the parfait is, thus far, not on the wedding menu).

They discovered their shared ice cream habit the first time they went through the Dairy Queen drive-thru together: “We both said, ‘Well, what do you want?’ ‘What do you want?’ and we both said the same thing at the same time,” she recollected.

In addition to sharing the occasional treat, Mary Anne and Michael own two businesses together: Tower Publishing, a small, independent publisher; and Rogue Industries, which handcrafts wallets in Maine.

At home, they share cooking duties. She raised — and fed — a family in an earlier relationship, so she especially loves getting the evening off when Michael cooks for her. “I play the piano while he cooks,” she said. “It’s a win-win.” When it’s her turn, he’s partial to her chicken masala, “so good, I won’t even order it in restaurants anymore,” he said. “Absolutely exquisite.”

Michael and Mary Anne estimate they indulge in the classic Dairy Queen treat — vanilla soft serve, hot fudge and peanuts — every couple of months, more often in summertime. “It’s not a full-on addiction,” he said. “It’s more of a little decadence every now and then.”

The nearby Dairy Queen is “waaay too convenient,” he added.

Why share? They’re not teenagers in a “Happy Days” episode splitting a sundae on a date, after all. “It’s huge, and I want to maintain my fluffiness,” Mary Anne said, adding, ” I am not really overweight, but I’m just a little fluffy.”

“I’m not touching this one,” Michael said with a laugh.

THE ROMANCE OF THE PERFECT BREAKFAST SANDWICH

“Scouting for breakfast sandwiches is a relationship ritual for us!” Rebecca Goldfine wrote in an email about the centrality of the humble meal to her romance with Brian Duff.

With no exceptions that they can recall, the couple eats the sandwiches only when they are together. And they eat them only when they are out. “Out,” for them, means outside. Rebecca is the founder of the website Maine by Foot, a guide to trails around the state. The two spend many of their weekends tromping, to use her word, up and down mountains.

Brian, a professor of political science at the University of New England and not previously an avid camper, describes himself as “the person who was willing to tag along.” He also followed her into vegetarianism, which means “tons and tons” to her, Rebecca said. The couple live in West Bath.

As any serious hiker knows, the activity makes you ravenous. To tamp down hunger, the pair often eat a first breakfast at their campsite: coffee and toast with cheese or peanut butter, then head out in search of a vegetarian breakfast sandwich for more serious fuel. “When we find a really good one,” he said, ” it really starts our day on the right foot.”

The breakfast sandwiches are a practical to-go food. They’re fast — who has time for a leisurely brunch before hitting the trail? They’re cheap, and both Brian and Rebecca are “allergic to spending,” Brian said. The couple likes getting to know remote pockets of Maine through the general stores that typically sell breakfast sandwiches, though finding one without bacon and with vegetables can be a challenge. In Steuben, Rebecca once asked for spinach on her breakfast sandwich. “Spinach?” the woman at the grill repeated skeptically. “You’re not in Ellsworth, honey.”

Brian and Rebecca met at a coffee shop in 2008, set up, unbeknownst to them, by a colleague of Brian’s. They dated for a few years, then split up. Five years later, they reunited. In the meantime, Rebecca, whose day job is in communications at Bowdoin, had started her website.

In many ways, camping and hiking are now at the heart of their relationship. “It was all those hours out in the woods, walking and chatting and campfires at night and that whole business,” Brian said. “It’s a big part of why this second version of our relationship, which we call Becky and Brian 2.0, why it’s been so nice.”

Rebecca mentioned two other highlights of their frequent treks. “When we’re out camping and hiking, the breakfast sandwich provides one of the bigger excitements of the day — along with the view from the top of the mountain.”

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NOLA’S CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Back when they were dating, Rick Urban asked his then-girlfriend Nola for her cookie recipe. He wasn’t pleased with how his cookies turned out. Did he marry her to ensure a steady supply? “I will neither confirm nor deny that that was the reason,” he said, with a big laugh. The recipe comes from the back of the chocolate chip cookie bag, but Nola has adjusted it to their taste.

Yield: About 80 bite-sized cookies

1 stick margarine, softened
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 2/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate chips, more if desired

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Blend the margarine with the shortening. Add the sugars and cream the mixture together. Add the eggs and the vanilla extract. Add 1 1/3 cups of the flour with the baking soda. Add the remaining 1 1/3 cups flour stirring to blend. Stir in the chips, adding more if you need them.

If the dough is wet/sticky, add more flour in small amounts. The size of the eggs may make more flour necessary (larger eggs have more fluid). When you spoon out the dough, you should be able to form the cookies into a ball without the dough sticking to your fingers.

Measure out the cookies on a flat cookie sheet (not the old-fashioned type with sides) in teaspoons. Push the chocolate chips (3 or 4 per cookie) into the dough, so when the cookies are baked, there is no chocolate oozing out and making a mess (and losing good chocolate!)

Bake the cookies for 7 minutes; if you make larger cookies, bake them a bit longer, try 8 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to the cooling rack to finish cooling. Enjoy!

MARY ANNE’S CHICKEN MARSALA

Like many, Mary Anne Hildreth cooks recipes that are on repeat in her home without exact measurements. Here’s what she does.

Serves 4

Chopped onions
Chopped portobello mushrooms
Chopped carrots
Butter
Olive oil
Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper
Garlic powder   
Other seasoning to taste
1 pound chicken cutlets
1 egg, lightly beaten
Flour seasoned with salt and pepper, plus about 1 tablespoon for the roux
1/2 cup marsala wine
1 cup chicken broth (or 1 cup water and 2 chicken bouillon cubes)
Rice or pasta, to serve

Sauté the onions, mushrooms and carrots in butter and a little olive oil in a frying pan until tender. Season with Italian seasoning, salt and pepper, and garlic powder. Set aside in a bowl.

Dip the chicken cutlets in the egg, then in the seasoned flour. Melt a little butter in the same pan in which you sauteed the vegetables, then sauté the chicken until tender, seasoning it with Italian seasoning and garlic powder. Remove and set aside. Add about 1 tablespoon flour to the pan, stir for a minute or so, then add the wine and chicken broth and stir to deglaze the pan and make a roux. Taste for seasoning, adding more if necessary.

Return the chicken and veggies to the pan. Simmer until the sauce is thickened and everything is warm. Serve over rice or pasta. Enjoy!