A couple finally got hitched six decades after their parents stopped them from getting married as teenagers.
Len Allbrighton, 79, and Jeanette Steer, 78, first met in 1963 when they were training together as nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in the Isle of Wight in the English Channel.
They told South West News Service that their romance was “love at first sight,” and after just a few months of meeting each other, Len asked Jeanette to marry him.
However, Jeanette’s parents put a stop to the wedding as she was only 18 years old and the legal age of consent at the time was 21.
Before they were set to get married, Len moved to Australia and had planned to buy a piece of land and build a house for them. He was going to bring Jeanette over to Australia after all of this was done.
Her parents wouldn’t let her move to Australia either and she had to call the entire wedding off. She sent him a letter explaining why she had to end their engagement.
He ended up marrying someone in Australia and she married someone on the Isle of Wight.
But 52 years later, Len got divorced and decided to look for his long-lost love again. He traveled back to the Isle of Wight and looked for Jeanette’s address in a directory — and found it. He decided to pay her a visit.
“I went on the off chance,” Len told SWNS. “It was not an easy place to find but I did.”
He continued, “I just hoped she was OK — I didn’t expect anything else. I’m very surprised by the outcome of my trip down there and very happy too!”
She found him standing outside her garden fence and, at first, she didn’t recognize his bearded face. Jeanette was shocked when he told her that it was Len from all those years ago.
At the time, Jeanette was married and living with her husband. She had to turn Len away and she told her husband that he was just a stranger who was looking for directions.
However, just two years later, her husband died of cancer and she reached back out to Len. He had sent her a Christmas card the year before, so she had his contact information.
“I was glad he looked me up,” Jeanette admitted. “I thought of him a lot at the time,”
Len then invited her to live with him in Stevenage, a town in England, and proposed to her last year.
They had their wedding five years to the day that Jeanette had moved in with Len on Feb. 11. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren bore witness to the ceremony, according to SWNS.
“We fell in love again,” Len gushed. “We read poems to each other and exchanged rings — I got emotional when reading mine. I was overwhelmed with my love for her.”
Jeanette agrees.
“Married life is fantastic — it couldn’t be better,” she said.
“It’s nice to have someone who treats me with respect. I like doing everything and anything with Len.”
