A former Ilkley policeman and his wife will celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on Saturday.

Joan and George Hobson, 72, of Leeds Road, first met when they both worked at Pool paper mills but their romance did not start off smoothly.

Initially, it was Joan’s friend who latched on to the tall handsome George, much to the disappointment of Joan, but that changed when he volunteered to serve in the Coldstream Guards.

He started writing to Joan when he was posted abroad and the couple married in 1959. After leaving the services George became a policeman, serving across West Yorkshire and becoming – while stationed in Marsden, near Huddersfield – involved in the search for buried victims of the infamous Moors Murderers on the bleak Pennine landscape of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border.

The couple have two children, Mark, 49, and Angela, 45, and one grandchild, Joshua, 20.

They celebrated their happy occasion with friends.

Asked what the secret of a happy marriage was, Joan could only quote a friend – “She always introduces us as the couple who argue all the time but who love each other very much,” said Joan.