Blue sapphire couple are still  ‘sweethearts’ after 65 years of marriage

Jack, 88, and Patricia Brooke, 85, of Spa Croft Road met in 1956 at the Embassy Ballroom in Wakefield after Jack had returned from his national service in Kenya.

Jack said: “I went across to her and asked her to dance. She said yes and we’ve been saying yes to one another ever since.”

He said that the secret of their long and happy marriage is that any disagreements are always settled on the same day and they never go to bed on an argument.

Jack was a mechanic who worked on ‘just about everything on wheels’ spending the last 18 years of his 49-year working life on the railways before retiring in 1997.

The couple have three sons, David, Nicholas and Richard who all worked on the railway as managers, seven grandchildren and one great- grandchild.

On Saturday nights, until they were well into their 70s Jack and Patricia went dancing at the Outwood Memorial Hall: the quickstep their favourite dance and Louis Prima’s Sing, Sing, Sing their favourite tune.

In his spare time Jack has always enjoyed gardening, bird watching and tracing his family tree - he has more then 2,000 relatives catalogued going back to the 1600s.

Patricia enjoyed baking and knitting until recent years.

Jack added: “After all these years we are still like sweethearts.”