Platinum couple are ready to celebrate with their family (From Wharfedale Observer)

Platinum couple are ready to celebrate with their family

9:33am Thursday 17th May 2012 in News By Annette McIntyre

A couple who have been married for 70 years celebrate their Platinum Wedding Anniversary this week.

Bob and Joyce Girt were thrown together at a dance in 1937 and have enjoyed each other’s company ever since.

The couple, who live in Yeadon, have enjoyed seven decades of happiness since their wedding at St Oswald’s Church in Guiseley in 1942.

Mrs Girt, who will be 89 this week, was only 14 when she met her future husband. Mr Girt, 91, was an apprentice bricklayer when he met his wife-to-be, and was in the army when the couple married.

“I was only 14, but I had left school and I was working,” she said. “I was allowed to go to the dance because one of the girls I worked with, who was going, was my cousin.”

“There were four of us and these four boys came over from Yeadon. They all paired off and left us – it was Hobson’s choice, it was just him and I,” she laughed.

And it was the start of a long happy relationship for the couple who have been together ever since.

“I came out of evening class the following Monday and he was stood there waiting to walk me home,” she said. “And the following Saturday he came knocking on the door.”

“We were friends and we had the same interests. We liked walking, dancing, and then we got a tandem and went cycling,” she said.

Mr and Mrs Girt, who built their own house 44 years ago, had little in the way of material wealth when they married during the Second World War.

“Like many others we married during the war taking what we could whilst we could – and the marriages lasted years and years, not like today,” Mrs Girt said.

“We led a different life then and breaking up was something unthinkable.”

“It was a case of two years after we were married I was expecting David. I had to get a house because we were badly overcrowded.

“The things we got were mostly second hand – I used to make a joke that our first ever carpet had built-in moth holes.”

The couple, who have two sons, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, will be celebrating their 70th anniversary with their family.