AS the new Royal couple get hitched under the gaze of the world's media, one County Durham husband and wife will celebrate 60 years since tying the knot.

On Monday, May 19, 1958, Bishop Auckland pair Ted and Margaret Dennis said their vows in front of a small gathering of family and friends.

Mr Dennis popped the question only three days prior to the wedding after finding he would be posted for three months to the Mediterranean with the Royal Navy.

The pair met one year earlier, when the naval officer was performing onshore duties as an internal postman as he awaited a training course at Portsmouth's HMS Vernon.

Among those in charge of him in the Women's Royal Naval Service (WREN), was his future wife Margaret.

"I bumped into her when I was onshore one night, we had a couple of drinks and made a date," said Mr Dennis, 81. "We courted for about a year after that."

Mrs Dennis, now aged 80, flew over to Malta to join her husband at his base and had their first child in 1959.

During Mr Dennis's career in the forces he, along with Mrs Dennis on occasions, travelled across the world before settling in Bishop Auckland.

Their other four children were born in Gloucester in 1960, in Bishop Auckland in 1965, in Dunfermline in 1966 and Gibraltar in 1972.

Originally from Crook, Mr Dennis said: "She brought the kids up on her own and did one hell of a job. Thanks to her I had 27 years in the Royal Navy and I loved every minute of it."

The couple have five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.