Jack Musler has been in business for more than a half century in Madison, and he isn't showing signs of quitting.

It's been 55 years since Spot-Lite Cleaners welcomed its first customer at its original location 698 Boston Post Road, after owners Jack and wife Rochelle ended up in Madison by accident.

"We got lost," Jack says. "We didn't have the vaguest idea where we were?We asked a guy standing in front of an empty store."

That store would become Spot-Lite, and soon Jack and Rochelle had moved to Madison. At the time, Interstate 95 was just a dream for the future, Madison had fewer than 3,000 residents, and the town's most popular gathering place was the local soda fountain.

"It was a more comfortable life, it wasn't rush-rush," recalls Jack. "When we came to town, there were six policemen, including the chief. When you'd go to the beach and see a strange face, you knew somebody new was in town."

Back in those early days, Jack didn't think Spot-Lite would still be around in 2012.

"Most of the time, I only think a week ahead!" he jokes.

And today, Spot-Lite has seen a lot of changes, including a new location, a 100 year-old building on Bradley Road.

"The store is fully computerized from front to the back?You can even tell what a customer had for lunch," says Jack with a smile.

One thing that's stayed the same is Jack's relationship to Rochelle. The two have been married more than five decades, after meeting as teenagers, when Jack agreed to drive a friend and his date to the junior prom.

"He said maybe he'd bring a date for me, but I liked his date much better," says Jack, who was just 16 when he first saw the 14 year-old Rochelle. "I think I fell in love wither the moment I saw her. That was it. We've been together even since, and I'm planning another 50 years."

The couple married six years later and today has two children, Jill and Gary.

"We've been married 56 years and I still feel like a kid because of his sense of humor," says Rochelle of her husband, who certainly keeps those around him laughing. "He's so much more than meets the surface, and he didn't start out as a dry cleaner."

Jack's early career was as an actor, when he took part in summer stock and Broadway's Circle in the Square in New York City and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

"This is not a process where you hit the jackpot right away. You can spend years and years getting nowhere and sometimes never and we wanted to get married and my wife mentioned eating, so I left New York and came up here to get a job," Jack says.

But Jack didn't leave his artistic side at the stage door. He's also an award-winning photographer whose work has been shown extensively and published in calendars. He's sold a number of prints, including several of a photo he shot of President John F. Kennedy when the future leader was campaigning in New Haven.

"I didn't have great equipment at the time and I couldn't see too well. I went in with a guy who's 6'4" and got on his shoulders and took the picture," says Jack, who got his start at the age of 10 when he was given an early version of the Polaroid camera.

"You poured the chemicals into it, shook it, threw that out, pressed a button, and out came a picture," says Jack, who is self taught and has taken photos all over the world, traveling to Aruba, Paris, Italy, and Morocco with Rochelle, who he says is his favorite shooting partner except, he jokes, when her eye for a good shot is better than his.

The couple is planning its next trip, a visit to see son Gary in Arizona, though Jack says he and Rochelle only travel "when the mood strikes us. I'm not a vacation person. I love Madison. There's no reason to go anywhere."

One more reason to stay is the business Jack has tended all these years. He still goes to work seven days a week.

"I do enjoy the business immensely. I read the mail and occasionally I point at people and say, 'Do this and do that,'" he jokes.

Still, the most rewarding part of his day is "going home!" Jack says with a good-natured chuckle. Then, more seriously, "no, it's satisfying a customer, of course."

But if Jack's dedication to family, craft, and client may not have changed over the years, he knows one thing that has: "I had hair when I started."