Diamond Jubilee story: Bodenham neighbours celebrate 60 years of marriage (From Hereford Times)
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Diamond Jubilee story: Bodenham neighbours celebrate 60 years of marriage
11:00am Friday 1st June 2012 in News By Lydia Johnson
Len and Eleanor Rhodes and Joan and Jeffrey Payne with their cards from the Queen
TWO Herefordshire couples are celebrating 60 years of marriage side by side.
The Rhodes and the Paynes, who didn't know each other at the time, married within three weeks of each other in 1952, the year King George VI died.
Now they have lived next door to each other for four-and-a-half-years in Bodenham, and are ready to celebrate the Queen's milestone together.
Eighty-year-old Eleanor Rhodes, who views the Paynes more as a family than neighbours, said: "Our postman was very shocked to deliver two congratulations cards from the Queen to neighbours within three weeks."
Eleanor met Len, 82, at a dance in the local church in Newcastle when she was 16, while Joan, 89, and Jeffrey Payne, 85, met outside the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton in 1950.
The Rhodes married two years later on February 23 and the Paynes on St Patrick's Day.
