Linda and Alan Maxwell first met as teenagers at The Forum cinema in Liverpool
A Southport couple who first met as teenagers at a Liverpool cinema are celebrating an incredible 60 years of marriage.
Linda and Alan Maxwell mark their diamond wedding anniversary on Thursday, March 19, a milestone they say feels completely natural after a lifetime spent side by side. The pair first met as teenagers at The Forum cinema in Liverpool, where weekly trips to the pictures were a way of life. Linda, then just 16, caught Alan’s eye from two rows behind.
She told the ECHO: “We’d both gone to the cinema with separate groups of friends to watch A New Kind of Love. He came over during the film and offered me one of his chocolates. I was playing hard to get, so I was a bit cruel towards him, really.”
After the film, the two groups made their way to the Pier Head to catch buses home, with Alan and his friends following Linda and her friends before parting ways.
Linda said: “He asked if he could see me again and I agreed.”
A few days later, Alan, then 18 and living in Walton, called at Linda’s family home in Broadgreen.
She said: “I was a bit frosty with him. I thought he looked a bit scruffy, he had this white mac on that didn’t look like it had ever seen the inside of a washing machine.”
But the pair went on a long walk from Broadgreen to Mossley Hill, and by the end of it, Alan had already made up his mind.
Alan, now 80, said: “When I first saw her, I thought she was very pretty, and when we spoke and got friendly, something just clicked. It’s hard to distinguish.
“I asked her to marry me. It just felt like the right thing to do, even though it sounds daft now, it didn’t seem it then, it seemed like a good idea.”
Linda, 78, added: “It wasn’t even a proper date, he didn’t spend any money on me, but you don’t notice things like that when you’re in love.”
At the time, Alan was an apprentice electrician, and Linda had just left school to work as a dental nurse.
Marriage wasn’t initially on Linda’s mind. She said: “I wasn’t thinking of marriage. You didn’t think that far ahead in those days. I thought he was nice looking, and I was just grateful to have a boyfriend.”
After an 18-month engagement, Linda and Alan were struggling to tie the knot due to resistance from their parents, because of their age and the costs.
Linda said: “We were so young, so we had a lot of trouble persuading our parents to let us marry because you had to be 21, so they wanted us to wait until we were older, and also we weren’t on good money.”
Still, determined to get married, the couple hatched a plan to elope to Gretna Green.
Linda said: “We had the bus tickets to go. I went round to my auntie’s and told her that if I went missing, it was because we were running away to get married. She immediately told my mum.”
Instead, Linda’s mum stepped in and gave them permission to marry on her next long weekend off work.
Linda said: “We arranged it with the vicar that very night. It was quite romantic.”
The couple married in what Linda described as “a small white wedding” at St David’s Church in Broadgreen in 1966.
She said: “We didn’t have much money, so we had a small wedding and a small reception. I bought my dress from a friend, which I’ve still got, and we didn’t have a honeymoon, just a week off together in our flat.”
Their first home was a rented flat in Southport, which they found through a newspaper advertisement.
Linda said: “We were in a little dream world. We didn’t have any money or the prospects of it, but we just coped. I’d cook tea every night in my pinny, we were just playing house really.”
After two and a half years, they saved enough to buy their first home in Southport, before moving in 1980 to Wyresdale Avenue, where they have lived ever since.
Linda said: “We’ve been very lucky here. It’s such a friendly place.”
The couple went on to have two sons, Stuart and Steven, and six grandchildren, and two “very precious” great-grandchildren. Family, they say, has been at the heart of their 60 years together.
Linda said: “The biggest challenge has probably been money when we were younger, but we always looked after each other.
“We’re just part and parcel of each other’s lives. There isn’t a gap between us. We’re joined at the hip, and we are one. We find it difficult to be without each other.”
She added they were inspired by Alan’s late brother and her sister-in-law. She said: “We followed their example. They showed us what a strong marriage looked like. We spent all our time with them and were extremely close.”
The couple have shared many happy memories over the years, including holidays to Greece, which became their favourite destination.
Linda said: “Greece was our thing. We used to visit there a lot, just Alan and me. We love the people, the food and the red wine.”
Despite spending six decades together, Linda said it feels as though no time has passed at all.
She said: “It’s just our life. All I know is that he just loves me. He does a lot for me. He’s very good. It’s incredible. We’ve been very lucky. We’re most proud of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We’ve got a good family backing us up, and I think that’s important.”
