PROOF that 'love at first sight' really does exist can be found in two Barnsley couples who are jointly celebrating their diamond wedding anniversaries.
Harry Makings proposed to Nancy less than two hours after he first set eyes on her 61 years ago, and next Thursday marks 60 years since they tied their not. But their chance meeting at a funfair in Barnsley Town Centre sparked not one but two marriages of 60 years each - and counting.
Nancy and best friend Joan Padgett were just 18 when they shared a car on the dodgems at a funfair in Barnsley Town Centre on June 7 1954.
"Joan was driving, but I grabbed hold of the wheel because I could see these two lads stood at the side and they were both holding these coconuts. I steered over to them and I just grabbed Harry's coconut. And that was it.
"We'd never set eyes on either of them before. But we got off the dodgems and we got talking to them. Before we knew it I said to Joan 'we've missed the last bus'.
"She was stopping at our house and the lads said they'd walk us home, all the way to Staincross." It was clearly an eventful walk walk home - Joan was wearing new high heels which hurt her feet, and Len Padgett, now 84, agreed to swap shoes with the young Joan he'd just met.
"He wore Joan's heels all the way back to Staincross," said Nancy. "You told us you only lived at Smithies," joked Len. As the foursome stood at the top of Nancy's parents' street at Staincross, at some time approaching midnight, Harry took a leap of faith and asked Nancy, the girl who had stolen his coconut less than tour hours earlier, to be his wife. "I knew she was the one I wanted," he said.
"I took to her straight away. It was love at first sight."
Len and Joan have also been together since that night and married a few months after Harry and Nancy in 1955.
Harry and Nancy will be having a party to celebrate their anniversary tomorrow, but in a few weeks all four will take a Mediterranean cruise together to jointly celebrate their '120 years' of marriage. Harry and Nancy, of Greenside, Mapplewell, have four children, 12 grandchildren and three great grandchildren and celebrate their anniversary on Thursday, August 13. Joan and Len, of Moorland Terrace, Cudworth, also have four children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren and will celebrate their anniversary on December 17.
