A DIAMOND couple who met in the dance halls of a Midlands city have celebrated 60 years of marriage.

Tadley couple Tommy and Pauline Leadbetter marked their diamond anniversary on Thursday, 28 September, receiving a telegram from The Queen congratulating them on the achievement and enjoying a family meal at Oliver’s, in Old Basing, on Friday, 29 September.

The pair, of Hartshill Road, both grew up in Coventry, so experienced the devastation wrought on that city during the Blitz, and met at a dance hall in the mid-1950s as Tommy, who was a trained plumber, would frequent the hall with his parents who were keen dancers.

It could have been a very different story after Tommy was conscripted into the Army in 1950. In 1953, while stationed in Hong Kong, he was days away from being sent to Korea to fight in the ongoing war there but was drafted into the Royal Engineers who were looking for trained tradespeople.

Many of his regiment were killed or wounded in Korea.

The pair courted - Tommy drove Pauline, a chemist assistant at the time, home from their dates on his Tiger Triumph 100 - and eventually married at St Lawrence’s Church, in Coventry.

Pauline, 80, said: “It was a wonderful day.

“You never think when you get married that you will still be together 60 years later, I never thought anything like that. It is lovely to be here now, still together.”

They honeymooned for a week in Christchurch, Dorset, before moving into a house together in Coventy where they had three sons. They now also have five grandchildren.

Tommy, who was made a freeman of the city of Coventry in 1953 after qualifying as a plumber, moved to Tadley in 1977, working for AWE as a plumber and pipe fitter, but it was not easy as it was another six months before Pauline also moved down.

Tommy, 87, said: “I used to go up every weekend on my motorbike to see her.”

Pauline worked in Hussey’s bakery in the town and as a cleaner at AWE while the pair lived first in Furze Road and then moved into their current home in Hartshill Road in 1995.

On the secret to a long marriage, after Tommy jokingly mimed zipping his mouth shut, Pauline said: “Tommy has always been very placid.

In the last few years, he has had to be very helpful as I have had health problems but that is why we are together for so long, as you support each other.

“You just keep going on really, day by day, always supporting one another.”