Scuba diving couple left floating in the ocean for 36 hours during 'atrocious' storm reveal how they survived after becoming separated from their group

A couple who went missing while scuba diving described how they were rescued after nearly 40 hours at sea.

During that span, officials said Kim and Nathan Maker never once left each other's side - wading in waters miles off the Texas coast in desperate need of rescue.

The Oklahoma residents were spotted by a plane just hours before the search was to be called off - an outcome family and friends are billing as nothing short of a miracle as storm swells threatened to swallow the pair whole.

The rescue happened in the famously treacherous Gulf of Mexico early Friday - 36 hours after the two were seized by a current that separated them from their group on Wednesday.

A day of searching yielded nothing - as fellow divers recalled to news stations in the Sooner State of how they lost sight of the Makers.

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'The rain was so hard that you couldn't see outside,' diver Lisa Shearin recalled to Fox 19 Now Sunday of how the inclement weather hit mid-dive. 

'It stormed, and the winds and waves were atrocious,' she said.

As others made it to the boat safely, the Makers were nowhere to be seen, she and others said. 

Charles Owen, a relative of the couple, described how the separation happened in a span of ocean near the city Matagorda.

'A huge swell comes in and engulfs Kim and Nathan totally,' Owen, Nathan's uncle, said.

'When the swell rolls out, they're nowhere to be found.

'There was a storm moving in and the divers had all surfaced and was going to prepare to get back on the boat,' he further explained to Oklahoma News 4.

'As the 16 got in, in the meantime, the swell comes in and engulfed all of them.'

Nathan and Kim then inflated their safety devices in a successful bid to return the surface, relatives and Coast Guard officials said.

But by then, the storm - seen early Wednesday evening - had become to powerful, witnesses said, and soon enough, the Markers were miles away from where the group had dove. 

'Very scary,' Owen said of the 1,656 square mile, roughly 36-hour search that ensued.

It started around around 7 pm Wednesday, when he and other members of the family first got a call from the Coast Guard, saying the couple had disappeared that morning while scuba diving in the Gulf, he said.

After a day-and-half, 'We’d already practically have given up hope,' the Edmond man said - recalling how the grid officials had laid out and had just finished searching failed to find anything.

It wasn't until hour 36 when officials were close to calling off their search when a discovery was made, officials said - in the dead of night miles away from the initial dive site. 

 'This plane happened to be in the air last night making its last run outside the grid and Nathan and Kim had their diving flashlights and they were doing the S.O.S. to point at the plane’s bottom,' Owen said of how it happened.

'The plane saw them on one last pass. Then the boats came to the rescue.'

The discovery brought an end to what had many had begun to suspect was a futile effort, and provided proof of the couple's undying devotion to one another, Owen said.  

'Even when the swell came over, they found them; they were together,' he said.   

'We thank everybody for their concerns and their prayers. This miracle was performed by the Coast Guard at God’s direction.'

Shearin, the only diver on the 18-person group to speak about the scare, added: 'People don’t survive that and not have a story to tell,

“They have a greater purpose, obviously,' she said, growing emotional at times.

'God truly did spare them.”    

The Coast Guard, meanwhile, went on to issue its own statement on Friday, hours after the 1am rescue 15 miles offshore from Matagorda.

'Sector Corpus Christi watchstanders received a notification Wednesday afternoon reporting that the divers were last seen surfacing in unfavorable weather conditions and were not seen after conditions cleared,' the bulletin read.

'Air Station Corpus Christi MH-65 Dolphin Helicopter and HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft aircrews were launched along with a Station Port O’Connor 45-foot Response Boat-Medium boat crew to search for the divers. 

'The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Edgar Culbertson was also directed to assist with search efforts.

'The Ocean Sentry aircraft aircrew spotted a flashing light in the water while searching and vectored in the divers' location to the cutter. 

'The divers were transported to Coast Guard Station Freeport, and were last reported to be in stable condition,' the statement concluded.

The couple, meanwhile, have yet to issue their own statement. As of Monday morning, it remained unclear if they were back home in Edmond.