Some give and take is platinum pair’s secret to 70-year marriage

Marking 70 years of marital bliss, Frank and Mary Denvir shared a romantic kiss.

The couple, who have been living in Union Hall in West Cork for 23 years, survived Frank’s brush with death during the Second World War to raise eight children in Glasgow, before retiring to Ireland to grow old together.

Mary was just 18 when they met, working as a cashier in a shop. Frank looked after deliveries, but was conscripted to join the British army. He joined the Irish Guards. because it was the only regiment that offered the Last Rites in keeping with his Catholic faith.

They married on June 12, 1942, after a six-month engagement. Despite rationing, Mary managed to secretly gather the ingredients for their wedding cake.

“They could search you to see what provisions you had,” she says.

Just days into their marriage, Mary, now 91, waved Frank, now 96, off to war from the platform at Glasgow’s Central Station, not knowing if he would return alive.

In 1944, Frank was dispatched to Normandy 10 days after the Allied invasion. A sergeant in the 2nd armour division, he was leading soldiers through an orchard at Arnhem in the Netherlands when the Germans struck, leaving him with shrapnel wounds to his head. The events were depicted in the film A Bridge Too Far.

Flown to England, he remained unconscious for a week, but after months of rehabilitation, he made a full recovery.

“He is a good husband. He never smoked or drank, he was a good boy. Our time was taken up with our children, that was our concern. It’s a different world from today that we grew up in,” says Mary.

The couple spent annual holidays in Ireland, renting pier-side cottages in Union Hall during the 60s, before retiring permanently to the seaside fishing village in 1989.

As to advice on how to reach a platinum wedding anniversary?

“Be prepared to come and go a bit [a bit of give and take],” says Frank. “That’s the secret to a happy marriage.”