Couple celebrate a diamond day

12:31am Thursday 20th December 2007

Diamonds are definitely forever where John and Joan Carroll are concerned.

Today, the couple, of Moore Avenue, Wibsey, Bradford, were celebrating 60 years together by joining friends and family at Queensbury Conservative Club.

Mr Carroll, now 80, and his bride, now 77, were married at St Joseph's Church in Manchester Road, Little Horton.

He had been at sea serving on minesweepers in the Atlantic and off the coast of South Africa as part of the allied effort with the Royal Navy.

But while he was on leave Mr Carroll met his wife-to-be at the Textile Ballroom and it was love at first sight.

He had to go back to the Navy but was de-mobbed in March the next year and the couple eventually married a year almost to the day after they had met.

For their honeymoon, they spent a fortnight in Blackpool and their love of the coast continued after that.

The couple spent many happy hours driving to their seaside holiday destinations in a Reliant three-wheeler van.

When he left the Navy, Mr Carroll re-joined Allied Colloids, in Low Moor, Bradford, where he had worked for almost all his working life.

His wife worked in Fullers tea rooms, which later became Betty's.

The couple have two sons, John and Stephen, and two daughters, Susan and Josephine, a dozen grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.

Susan, 56, of Hainsworth Moor Crescent, Queensbury, put her parents' long marriage down to her dad's "wicked sense of humour" and her mum's "patience".

Mrs Carroll said: "I have let him go out and play darts, cricket, football, he's played everything there is. I have been happy with him and he has been happy to be in the pub! But we are both happy when we get home."

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