Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Mimi Hoke (left) and Elsie Milan (right) talk with Doris Shelton at her party on Friday. Shelton met Milan at the Roanoke Athletic Club 15 years ago, and Shelton still exercises at the RAC three times a week.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Doris Shelton dances with her husband David at her 90th birthday party held Friday at the Vinton War Memorial.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Barbara Booker (left) hugs Doris Shelton during Shelton's birthday party on Friday.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

David and Doris Shelton, shown in a 1940s photograph, married in 1941.

She said she can't keep her feet still when she hears a good beat.

At 89, Doris Shelton was first to hit the dance floor Friday evening at the Vinton War Memorial.

The song was "Having A Party," but it wasn't Rod Stewart crooning. It was soul singer Sam Cooke, who recorded the original tune in 1962.

The occasion was Shelton's birthday. She will be 90 years old Thursday.

But she is only the fourth oldest of seven living siblings.

Among the more than 60 guests were Shelton's four sisters and a brother -- a mix of octogenarians and nonagenarians -- to help her celebrate.

Partygoer Richard Milan of Roanoke County said he wondered what the family's secret to longevity is.

"I keep in good shape," Shelton said. "I have been exercising for 40 years."

The tall, slender white-haired woman said she works out three times a week at the Roanoke Athletic Club. She walks on the indoor track, uses the exercise machines and lifts free weights.

According to Shelton's daughter, Lynne Hanushek, of Mullica Hill, N.J., the other siblings exercise too.

Sister Alma Amrhein, 88, walks and does water aerobics at Salem Family YMCA. Sisters Clara Hall, 94, and Olivia Webster, 85, exercise regularly at the Kirk Family YMCA in Roanoke.

Webster, who walks and uses the treadmill, said the secret to longevity is twofold:

"For me it is exercise and red wine," she said spryly.

Of Shelton's siblings, only the oldest, Louise Bolt, 98, no longer drives. But she would if she could get away with it, some family members said. She does not exercise, though she did for years, and she swears by her vitamins.

Brother Oscar Hutcherson, 92, said although he has degenerative arthritis, he stays active by walking. Every day he paces a 100-foot section of his Roanoke County condominium back and forth 25 times, which equals about a mile.

Despite the physical activity Hanushek said she believes the real secret is in the family's genes.

Shelton takes pride in the follow-up letter she receives from her physician following her annual physical, which she said consistently rates her condition "superb."

"He always uses that word and, you know, that is a word you don't hear a lot," she said.

Shelton moved to Southeast Roanoke during the Great Depression. Her father, a tobacco farmer, and four of her sisters later went to work at American Viscose Corp., a mammoth textile mill that closed in 1958. Shelton and seven of her eight siblings were born in Pittsylvania County.

A back problem kept Reginald Hutcherson, 79, the baby of the family, from attending Shelton's party Friday. Two of her older sisters are deceased.

Shelton and David, her husband of 66 years, have lived in an apartment at Friendship Retirement Community for 10 years. After he retired from selling electronics the couple spent eight years towing a camper and traveling all over the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

"We went everywhere you can pull a trailer, from the Arctic Circle to Acapulco," Shelton said.

In the early 1940s she was working in a beauty shop in Roanoke when she met her husband, who worked in the same building. He said he saw her, gathered the courage to ask her for a date and has been in love with her ever since.

"I feel just as emotional toward Doris today as I did in 1941," said David Shelton, 90.

The only time the couple ever spent apart was the year and a half David was deployed U.S. Navy during World War II, which was not long after the couple wed.

December 26 will mark the Sheltons' 67th wedding anniversary.

"We have had a wonderful life," Doris Shelton said.