Diamond couple reveal secret to happy marriage

Frank and Gwendoline Chorlton have been married for 60 years

Gwendoline, 78, and Frank, 79, have celebrated 60 years together although their planned trip is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The met when she was a pupil at Fairfield High School in Manchester before later moving to Blackpool.

Gwendoline’s auntie is Lady Grade, married to Lord Lew Grade – a British media proprietor, dancer and talent agent.

She says: “When I first saw Frank I was 16 and he was with his friends on their bikes as they had come to meet some girls. A few months passed and we went to St Mary’s in Droylsdon to a church dance on a Saturday night.

“Our eyes met across the crowded room and he asked me for a dance.”

Gwendoline had to be home at 10pm and so 17-year-old Frank, a true gent, escorted her home on the bus.

She says: “We went to the cinema the night afterwards. We sat on the back row and didn’t see much of the film!”

Frank, then an engineer and Gwendoline, a legal secretary, married on April, 30 1960 and moved to Blackpool in 1972.

They bought a guest house on Erdington Road and later bought holiday flats on Central Drive.

The happy couple – who have daughter Susan, 59; son Christopher, 57; grandson Daniel, 29; daughter-in-law Tanya, 29; and six-year-old great-granddaughter Scarlett Rose – were planning to spend their wedding anniversary in Tenerife, but due to the Coronavirus pandemic have now postponed it until next year.

They were also having a family party at The Welcome Pub in Blackpool but will reschedule once the lockdown restrictions have been lifted.

Daughter Susan works at Morrrison’s supermarket on Squires Gate and she says they sent a surprise anniversary hamper to the couple on their special day.

The couple say the secret to a happy marriage is “forgiving and forgetting, saying sorry if you are in the wrong and only ever falling out if it is something serious”.