'She's the love of my life': Scarborough couple celebrate 70 years of marriage

Dennis Leech,91, met wife-to-be Kathleen, also 91, at York City Swimming Baths in 1948 when Dennis was just 15, and Kathleen, 16.

Dennis said: “I’d always fancied her from afar. Kathleen was very beautiful, she had lots of boys after her.

“My mother and Kathleen’s mother had been brought up together.

“I had been working in a factory and had scalded my foot and I started going to the swimming baths. Kathleen's mum was a cashier there and she realised who my mum was.

“In December, at the swimming baths Christmas dinner, my dad said: ‘That’s a very pretty girl, why don’t you ask her to dance?’ And so I got up and I danced with her.”

By the time the couple left the dance floor, Dennis’s father had arranged for Kathleen to come to tea the following Sunday.

Kathleen said: “I daredn’t say no!”

Dennis’s father made a lovely tea for the young couple and then sent them to the cinema where they saw Carousel.

Dennis said: “From that day on I saw her every day. It took me three week’s to kiss her…and that was on the cheek…”

The couple got engaged at age 19. Dennis still carries the engagement photo in his wallet, “Look how beautiful she was,” he said.

They married on March 21, 1953, the first day of Spring, after Dennis completed his National Service. Dennis distinctly recalls travelling to the ceremony on the Number 9 bus.

The couple went on to have five children, Paul, Diane, Colleen, Gary and Katie. They also have 15 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

Dennis joined the Police Force and was stationed at Keighley, but soon realised he wasn’t happy in the job and returned to Army life where he remained until 1974, working, among other things, as an instructor of wireless and a gunnery schools instructor.

Kathleen travelled for much of Dennis’s army life with him, including spending a tour in Benghazi where the children’s schooling included mornings of education, afternoon’s on the beach and a cruise to Egypt where they saw Tutankhamun while he was still in his tomb.

Then Dennis was posted to Aden and the couple spent 15 months apart.

Dennis said: “We wrote to each other every single day and I would sit in the turret of my tank reading her letters.”

After leaving the army Dennis took various jobs including tax officer and caretaker at York College of Art and Technology and later West Ham College, before becoming an Estate manager in Knightsbridge.

The couple moved to Scarborough 10 years ago to be nearer three of their children who live in the town.

Dennis “The thing I think most about is that awfully long time when I was in Aden and I didn’t see her, but I was always joined to her by an invisible string

“I couldn't have had a better mother for my children.”

Kathleen added: “I’ve had a wonderful life, I really have, he takes great care of me, I’m blessed.”

Dennis said: “It’s been so good, I don’t want it to stop. She’s been the love of my life”

The couple will celebrate with a family party on Saturday March 18.