Every Valentine’s Day, Ray Sauser drives around 20 miles from his home in Severna Park to the little chocolate shop on Wilkens Avenue. There are closer places to buy chocolate-covered cherries and caramels. But this is the place he prefers to fulfill his mission: to buy a 2-pound box of chocolate truffles for his wife, just like her dad used to do before he died.

After all, nothing says “I love you,” like a schlep to Rheb’s Candies. Nearly 108 years after it first opened, it’s still on the same block in Southwest Baltimore, a feat of endurance almost unparalleled in local food history.

At Rheb’s, continuity is the point. Its cult-like fan base includes fourth-generation shoppers, who come in for assortments on Valentine’s Day and other holidays just like their parents and grandparents before them.

They don’t seem to care what the price is. Last June, the company posted on Facebook a disclaimer letting shoppers know that upheaval in the global cacao market would have an impact on what it charges and the selection available. A typical response was, “I will pay any price for Rhebs vanilla buttercreams.”

They don’t care how long the line is, sometimes up to two hours, particularly around the holidays. In fact, they seem to enjoy it, said Jarrod Bradley, who manages and co-owns the company together with descendants of its founders.

Bradley often tells the story of a customer who, following a knee operation, waited in line for nearly two hours to pick up chocolate ahead of Christmas. “I said, ‘Ma’am, next year, call us and we will put an order in for you,’” Bradley says. Her response, recalls Bradley: “What fun would that be?”

But customers may care about how bad the weather is. Bradley said he was bracing for the impact of this week’s forecast storm, which has the potential to derail one of Rheb’s Candies’ biggest holidays. “You’re not going to regain those sales,” he said, noting that most customers either stop in on their way to work or drive from long distances to get there. Aside from the hospital across the street, “There’s no reason for anyone to walk by here.”

It was here that, in the early 1900s, a newly married German immigrant named Louis Rheb began making candy in the basement of his home at 3352 Wilkens Ave.: taffies, brittles, fudge and jellies. He and his wife, Esther, sold the stuff at some of the city’s local markets: Hollins and Belair, before opening a stand at Lexington Market in the 1930s. In 1950, they converted a garage behind their house into their main store.

With its exterior clad in Formstone, that staple of midcentury Baltimore architecture, the shop looks about the same as it did when customers like Barbara Hammel were kids. A third generation Rheb’s customer after her mom and grandmother, Hammel, who lives nearby, says she always picks up a few pounds of candy for her daughter in Georgia when she goes to visit. “I just did a drive-by because my girlfriend wanted some chocolate-covered cherries, and I said, ‘If there’s not a line out the door, I’ll run in for you.’”

In the factory next door, workers had poured a sheet of caramel on a table that dated back to the early 1900s. Nearby was a mixer purchased during World War II; Bradley said it sat unused for years as Rheb’s waited for an available electrician. “I want to expand and go bigger,” says Bradley, but the family members resist. It was a push, he says, to get an e-commerce website.

The recipes go back at least to the 1930s, but the real secret to the chocolate is in the technique, says Bradley, and staff members’ skill at mastering the finicky stuff. Chocolate will break down at 120 degrees, and must be heated to a precise temperature in order to have the exact right shine and snap. A chocolate-covered caramel should pop when you bite in, Bradley says.

In the shop, staff take their time, painstakingly rearranging boxes of chocolates to ensure that each jimmy chocolate truffle and chocolate-covered pecan fits together. “Can I help you, hon?” A man coming to pick an order gives his last name to a cashier. Hearing it, another cashier calls out that she knows his father. They went to school together 50 years ago.

Through the years, the store has also become a refuge during challenging times in people’s lives. Customers might come in to buy a gift for a loved one who’s in the hospital, or for a friend grieving a death. But, says Bradley: “When you come through my door, you’re happy to be here.”

At that moment, another man walked out of that door. It had been years since he last came to Rheb’s, not since before his wife died. People come and go, but there is still Rheb’s chocolates. In his arms were three brightly colored boxes, tied up with string, for a new friend.