That anyone would compare them to Bill and Hillary surprises and flatters Pat and Eileen Pilla. But when you learn that between them, the Pillas spent nearly 30 years as mayors of Tarrytown, the former First Couple naturally comes to mind. Okay, Village Hall isn’t the White House, and protecting Main Street merchants from incursion by a shopping mall isn’t revamping the healthcare system. Still, their long, separate stints in Tarrytown politics left the Pillas grateful for having had the opportunity to serve but now they are relieved to be out of the fray.

In all, they occupied the mayor’s office for 27 years, with their share of ups and downs. Pat served four terms, from 1975 to 1983; Eileen served six terms, from 1987 to 1999. Their re-election rate alone suggests they were popular, although each recalls substantial tension and friction between Republicans and Democrats.

Despite their detractors, however, each looks back with satisfaction on efforts that ultimately lead to the building of new baseball fields and village hall, developing the waterfront, reinvigorating the environmental council, and defeating a shopping center that would have threatened business on Main Street.

“I liked that we could do things for the village,” Pat, 79, said.

“I loved it,” Eileen, 78, said. “You can do so much for your community in that position.”

Each continued in public office after leaving the mayor’s post. Pat made an unsuccessful bid for New York State Senate, and then won a seat on the Greenburgh town council, where he served for 10 years. A career accountant, he retired in 1988, worked part-time for a while and continued to watch politics, he said, “from far away.”

Eileen, after 12 years as mayor, found other political outlets, including the Westchester County Planning Board, from which she just resigned, the environmental council in Ossining, where she and Pat live, and the board of her condominium, where she served as treasurer.

“I was always political,” Eileen said. “I enjoy knowing what’s going on and being part of the discussion.”

That, her husband says, is putting it mildly. “She also thinks she’s still the mayor of Tarrytown, because if she finds something is going on she calls someone,” he said, with an affection-filled grin.

Knowing that no one knows her better than her husband of 56 years, Eileen conceded, “More or less, I’ve been staying out of the fray,” she said, unable to mask what clearly is a struggle to stay on the political sidelines, especially with so much happening nationally that interests and infuriates her, like the fight in Congress over Medicare and President Obama’s plan for healthcare reform, which both she and Pat support.

“I get so angry,” Eileen said of news commentators who have been bashing Obama’s plan.

“If a Republican gets on and badmouths the Democrats, she turns it off,” Pat said.

“I miss that kind of involvement,” Eileen said. And yet, she knows that any kind of political participation demands time to read and study and attend meetings that invariably would cramp the freedom of retirement, including the three months in Florida the couple spends each winter.

That’s not to say Eileen is not active at all. Besides being an avid reader and cook, she works with a prayer shawl committee at the Church of the Transfiguration in Tarrytown, knitting shawls for people who are ill, recovering from surgery or who have suffered a loss.

“It’s very worthwhile,” she said. “It makes you feel good about yourself and other people. I feel like I’m accomplishing something.”

Pat, in the meantime, devotes much of his time to regular golf games, bridge, and helping Eileen clean the house. A dedicated Mets fan, he confesses to spending a lot of time at the computer, keeping track of players in his baseball rotisserie league. While he is content to watch politics from afar, Eileen keeps herself a little more submerged, if only by spending three hours every morning reading the New York Times. “She reads the whole thing,” Pat said.

Although intrigued at the thought of volunteering to rally support for healthcare reform on behalf of seniors, she knows what would happen if she returned to politics. “If I get involved…,” she said, looking at her husband.

“We’re retired,” Pat said, as if he had to remind her.