A Lifetime of Love: From Posing As Bride & Groom At Age 4 to 70 Years of Marriage

Theirs is truly a story of a lifetime of love. Ron and Eileen Everest were born in the same maternity unit, posed as “bride and groom” at a town carnival aged four, married for real at 21 and now, 70 years later, are celebrating their platinum wedding anniversary.

The couple, both 91, said that they had spent their entire lives loving each other after being born seven months apart at the Royal Navy maternity hospital in Gillingham, Kent. Their sailor fathers were good friends, having fought together in the First World War, and the families remained close as the children grew up, dressing them as a married couple for the Gillingham Carnival in 1926.

There then followed 14 years of separation as Mr Everest’s parents began a new life in Scotland and his future bride moved to south London.

However, the two families stayed in touch and when Eileen (then Campbell) started work in a wool factory at 18 — and had the rare opportunity to use its telephone — she chose to call her childhood sweetheart’s mother, Getrude.

This led to a meeting with Mr Everest and a blossoming romance. Mrs Everest still treasures the letter he sent proposing marriage in 1940, shortly before he went off to fight in the Second World War, serving, like his father, in the Royal Navy and seeing action in the Far East and in the Arctic Convoys.

The couple eventually married on June 7, 1943 and, other than for Mr Everest’s naval service — he was involved in the D-Day landings of June 1944 — have been inseparable since.

Telegraph.