CHINGFORD: Two couples celebrate diamond wedding anniversaries
3:04pm Thursday 21st June 2012 in Where I Live By Joe Curtis
Charlie and Win Tate celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary with a card from the Queen
TWO couples celebrated 60 years of marriage today.
Ken and Barbara Jones, and Charlie and Win Tate, all from Chingford, marked their diamond wedding anniversaries today (June 21) with cards from the Queen.
It was love at first sight for Mr and Mrs Jones, of Templeton Avenue, when the young RAF engineer spotted his wife-to-be across a London dance hall in 1940.
Mr Jones, now 91, said: "I was with a friend and said 'That's the girl I want to marry'. She was dancing when I entered the hall and it was a case of making a date for us to meet up."
But the lovers were kept apart during the Second World War owing to Mr Jones' job, only able to communicate via letters.
"We wrote to each other a lot over the next few years, we cared about each other very much and still do," added Mr Jones, now a retired managing director.
Mrs Jones now has Alzheimer's and lives in Heathlands Care Home in Hatch Lane, but her husband comes to visit her every day and held a party with all their friends to celebrate today.
Mr Tate, 81, of Deerleap Grove, said the secret to his longlasting marriage was compromise.
"You must be willing to give and take. I give and she takes," the retired gas engineer said.
He met his wife, who is now 80, when her friend began dating his brother in the '40s and the pair were married in Edmonton in 1948, when they were just 21 and 20 years old.
The pair were also parted when Mr Tate had to enter the national service for two years, but they kept up a lengthy letter correspondence as Mr Tate travelled around Europe.
Great-grandmother-of-three Mrs Tate said: "We have our moments but it's been a wonderful 60 years."
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