When they moved to Martha’s Vineyard 21 years ago, they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. But they did have a dream of what they wanted to create: Their own restaurant, a place with gardens, easy access to local ingredients and a welcoming feel that would keep regulars coming back year after year.With spring starting to settle in, things are relatively quiet at State Road, a 60-seat restaurant tucked among the farms and forests of rural West Tisbury. But Mary Kenworth already has diners calling for August reservations. She and her husband, Jackson, have run State Road since its 2009 opening—she overseeing the front of the house with her charm and knack for remembering every face and name, and he, shier but with a twinkly smile, leading the kitchen.

“I thought we were headed to Napa,” Mary says with a laugh. But sometimes life takes you on unexpected turns. And sometimes it takes you right back to where you started.

On a recent Sunday, after the last brunch customer was out the door, Mary and Jackson traded stories about what it takes to run a restaurant on the island year-round, revealed  favorite dishes and reminisced about the devoted regulars and famous names they’ve served (the Obamas and a Stanley Cup-toting Cam Neely included). Though there have been ups and downs during the past two decades, there’s one thing they both agree upon: “It’s a dream,” Jackson says.

Mary was an East Coast girl who first fell in love with the Vineyard as a college student, spending summers on the island while working practically every job there is in a restaurant—prep cook, waitress, front of house, you name it. But, never a fan of the cold, she moved to California after college, chasing the sunshine to Los Angeles. During a vacation, she ventured south to La Jolla and wound up at a staff party at the hotel, where she started chatting with the tall, smiling sous-chef: Jackson.

Years later, the couple, now married, was restless. Mary was working in the arts, but longed to be back in the food industry. Jackson, who’d spent time in the kitchens of such well-known restaurants as Spago and Citrus, was the executive chef at a Laguna Beach hotel, but spent more time behind a desk than behind a stove. The two daydreamed of opening a restaurant of their own and started talking about moving. Mary suggested Napa. Jackson wanted to try the East Coast. Perhaps joking, Mary said, “I’ll go back to the East Coast only if we move to Martha’s Vineyard.” Jackson said OK. “I never thought he’d go for it,” she says with a smile.

They moved in 1993, the year Bill Clinton first visited the island as president. Jackson took a job at the now-closed high-end restaurant Savoir Faire in Edgartown. “I really wanted to get to know the Vineyard, how things happened here,” he says. “Where do chefs get their food? How do they get their food? I got a quick lesson really fast.”

In the months that followed, he began to understand what it would take to run a restaurant not only on an island, but one with an economy that depends on the seasonal influx of customers, a place where the year-round population of 16,535 can swell to more than 100,000 in the summer months. He saw firsthand how quickly the restaurants filled up after Memorial Day—kitchens humming and waitstaff sometimes more than doubling—and slowed down after Labor Day, coming to a near halt after Columbus Day. He learned which fishermen delivered the best fish and came to rely on the island growers who simply showed up, unannounced, at restaurant backdoors selling greens, edible flowers or whatever else might be in season.

When Mary and Jackson were ready to look for a space of their own, they fell for the first one they saw. Nestled just off the road in West Tisbury, it had everything they’d imagined: gardens out back, lambs grazing a few fields away and a big porch where diners could linger over meals. The owners, however, were only interested in selling. At the time, Mary and Jackson could only afford to lease. So they looked elsewhere, eventually renting a romantic spot off the busy main drag in the town of Oak Bluffs, a tourist hotspot in summer. They called it the Sweet Life Cafe.

They opened in 1996, a time when fine dining in the U.S. meant exotic ingredients shipped from far away. But the island community was into local food long before it was trendy—living on an island requires a certain degree of self-sustainability. So Jackson put local sea bass on the menu and ordered bright red and yellow tomatoes from nearby farms. “It was just a no-brainer,” Jackson says of his approach in the days before “farm-to-table” was such a buzzword. “The bottom line is that it was a better product. And it was supporting my community—the local fishermen and farmers.”

Then, in 2003, the couple opened a second, more casual restaurant right across the street. Slice of Life was open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert (the chocolate fondants were so popular that customers would start complaining if they didn’t see them in the bakery case). They ran both for awhile, but still could not shake the dream of one day opening that restaurant with a garden, somewhere even closer to the sources of the food they featured and away from the hustle and bustle of Oak Bluffs’ Circuit Avenue.

In 2007, fate intervened. On Thanksgiving weekend, a fire broke out in the restaurant space that Mary and Jackson had fallen for more than a decade before. The fire destroyed the building, and the tenants wanted to start fresh and reopen their restaurant elsewhere. With help from investors, Mary and Jackson made an offer.

Over the course of nine months, the couple rebuilt from the ground up, working with a team of local engineers and builders and designer Michael Smith (who received a call from new first lady Michelle Obama halfway through the project—she wanted his help decorating the White House’s residential wing). They brought in centuries-old wooden beams from the old Necco candy factory in Cambridge, installed bathroom sinks made from refurbished copper, put a wood-burning grill in the kitchen and finally designed those gardens, seeding them with herbs they would soon feature on the menu. Less than a year later, they opened for business as State Road.

“It’s a dream,” Jackson says again. “We’re in the middle of the agricultural hub of the island. We’re 20 minutes from the docks of Menemsha. In the fields next door, there’s a gentleman raising pigs, then up the road they’re raising lamb.” He uses the produce, meat and fish from more than 30 island growers, farmers and fishermen. This time of year, you can find local spring greens on the menu—see the recipe at right—as well as fresh farm eggs, chicken from up the road and fish caught that day. “We are guided by what we can get,” says Jackson, who describes the cuisine as local, New American, with a twist. “We love the purveyors and the people we’re working with, and we want to showcase their work as best as we can.”

The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch and is open year-round, save for a five-week stretch in late winter for cleaning, repairs and a much-needed break. In the cooler months, it’s open only Thursdays through Sundays. Business slowly starts to pick up in early spring, and they’re savoring the pace. “People are tired of winter and they’re starting to get out,” Mary says. “Every night you’ll watch people seeing friends they haven’t seen since last summer. A table of two will turn into a table of four or six in a matter of minutes. It’s great.”

Soon the crowds will come and the 100-hour workweeks will begin. One year they counted the calls for reservations: On a summer day, more than 400 came into the restaurant’s two phone lines during the course of 12 hours.

“I like the differences in the seasons,” Mary says. “There’s a certain marathon mentality to it that’s fun and a challenge. I know that there is that day in June where there’s no looking back.”

What if the couple were to have a rare night off and enjoy the restaurant as diners? “I’d sit at position two at table 58,” Mary says without hesitation. “You’ve got a bird’s-eye view of everything that’s going on, but you’re in the corner, so you get the best of both worlds. Either that, or position one at table 21.”

“I was going to say that,” Jackson laughs. “Table 21, position one.”

“You can see people coming and going, see the gardens, see the people sitting at the bar,” Mary continues. “Or maybe someday we’ll be grownups, come in during the winter and sit by the fireplace.”

“My ideal meal would be made up of a lot of small plates,” Jackson says. “I’d go with the charcuterie and this wood-grilled skate wing that we’re serving as an appetizer right now. Or the lobster with pappardelle. Then I’d probably have the rabbit Bolognese.”

Such dishes have drawn some high-profile diners: The Obamas have visited during three Vineyard vacations (“a huge privilege,” Jackson says), and the cast of Saturday Night Live has closed the place down. A few years ago, Boston Bruins president Cam Neely brought in the championship trophy on a whim one summer evening shortly after the team won the Stanley Cup. “He ran it around the restaurant, and all of the staff and customers got to touch it,” Mary says. “I saw two grown men cry! They told me it made their life.”

Even during the busiest of busy times—July Fourth and pretty much all of August—and the times when island life makes it difficult to run a restaurant, neither would trade this sweet life for any other.

“It happens every day, sometimes 50 times a day, where I’m reminded that I’m just so happy to work here and live here,” Mary says. “The other day, [local farmer] Rebecca Miller came in with her daughter and said, ‘This is the only place she wants to eat lunch,’ and I just think, ‘Gosh, Jackson’s been buying their vegetables since Sweet Life.’ Or I’m driving home and I see a deer crossing the road, or pass by the water, and I just feel so lucky.”

“And it’s the people,” Jackson adds. “The staff we have, the customers we have.”

“There’s a lot of love,” Mary says. “The people we work with day in and day out—they make it all worthwhile.”

Julia Rappaport is a recovering food journalist who is now managing editor of communications and social media for a Boston-based education non-profit. Follow her on Twitter at @Julia_Rappaport.

State Road Spring Vegetable Salad

Serves 4

Herb Yogurt Vinaigrette

½ cup Greek yogurt
¼ cup fresh mint leaves
¼ cup basil leaves
1 tablespoon fresh dill
¼ cup parsley leaves
1 shallot, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 lemon,  zest and juice
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 cup canola oil

Add all the ingredients except oil to a blender or food processor. Slowly drizzle on oil. Season to taste.

Quinoa

1 cup quinoa
2 cups vegetable stock or water
1 teaspoon salt
olive oil

Rinse quinoa in strainer. Add to a pot on medium-high heat. Stir until quinoa is dry and just starting to toast. Add liquid, turn the heat to low, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, and let stand for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork, and drizzle with olive oil.

Salad

Pea shoots or other spring greens
Radishes, sliced thin
Asparagus, sliced thin
Snow peas, sliced thin
Local or organic carrots, sliced thin

Add greens, veggies and quinoa to bowls. Toss with vinaigrette.