A couple from Stowupland are celebrating 60 years of marriage which they put down to 'patience, always laughing, and understanding that we all grow old at different speeds.'

Ted and Sylvia Rigden first met in 1961 at a football club dance in Kent. 

"Ted came up to me and said, 'Are you spare?' What a brilliant chat up line that was!"

Apparently so as they began 'courting' and two years later, on July 11, 1964, they were married at St Andrew's Church, Mottingham, in South East London, where Sylvia had grown up.

Ted and Sylvia todayTed and Sylvia today (Image: Dionne Rushton)
They settled first in a Green Street Green, near Orpington where Ted had grown up, and began saving hard for the deposit on a house.

"Then one day Ted saw an advert for these bungalows in Stowupland for £3150," Sylvia remembers. "So we moved to Suffolk and have been here ever since."

They still live in the same bungalow today, although Ted, an engineer and toolmaker by trade, has extended it significantly since they first moved in.

The couple decided to wait 12 years before having children, taking their campervan all over Europe. But in 1977, they had their first daughter, Dionne, followed a year later, by their daughter, Nicola. 

Sylvia, 81, who had worked as manager of the job centre in Stowmarket, then stopped work for 12 years to raise her girls 'as you did in those days.' But when the girls were older, she worked again, first as a dinner lady at Stowupland High School, and then running the school's reprographics department, printing course work books for the students, a role she did for 30 years until she retired. 

Sylvia said when engineering jobs became more scare, Ted retrained as an HGV driver and they ran their own business out of Felixstowe doing container work.

"Ted was away quite a lot but we kept in touch over CB radio because there were no mobile phones in those days," she said. "I used to organise a lot of jumble sales so my handle was Jumble Queen. Ted's was Turbo Ted."

The couple now have six grandchildren, Hollie, 28, Daisie, 26, and Morgan, 23 who are Dionne's children and Lauren, 24, Kian, 22, and Scarlett, 7, who are Nicola's. 

They also have two great grandchildren who are Hollie's daughters, Mabel, 3, and Olive, six months.

"We're just lucky," said Ted, 83. "We have a really brilliant family."

Sylvia said she and Ted still send each other Valentine's cards every year, 'though not the padded ones you used to get as they don't do them any more.' They still love to travel and have been to Fuerteventura 31 times. 

The couple enjoyed a family garden party at the weekend to celebrate their Diamond wedding anniversary and are now looking forward to their daughter, Nicola's wedding to her partner, Dan.

"They've been together 18 years," Sylvia said, laughing. "I think she's sure now."

Sylvia' recipe for a happy marriage was the traditional 'give and take', but she added: "You need also patience, a sense of humour and an understanding that you both grow old at different paces.

"We're also really lucky because we have no real worries in the world."