Tom and Joan are a diamond couple

Tom and Joan Ankers celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary yesterday (Thursday), six decades after tying the knot at St John the Baptist church in Tachbrook Street.

They first met in 1947 after Mrs Ankers, originally from Darwen, Lancashire, sang in a fundraising concert in the railway canteen in Myton Road. Mr Ankers, then a railway driver, engineered a meeting.

He said: “I was with my friend. He said ‘I know that young lady. She works in Lantern Corner.’ So I went in to meet her.”

The Holt Avenue couple married on March 8, 1952 and lived in rooms in Shrubland Street. While Mr Ankers’ job took him up and down the railway lines of the UK, Mrs Ankers continued working as a clerk at Automotive Products until the couple started a family. She also performed in AP pantomimes and with Leamington and Warwick Operatic Society.

Mr Ankers, 84, who had started work at Great Western Railways aged 15, worked for British Rail until his retirement. The couple had two children, David, born in 1954, and Julie in 1955.

Asked what had kept them together, Mr Ankers said: “Being honest with each other,” while Mrs Ankers said: “We never got into debt.”

Mr Ankers, who remembers his father being on the dole in the 1930s in North Wales, added: “We wouldn’t have anything unless it was paid for. No HP. I saw so much poverty when I was a young lad.”