A PAPER round has led to a lifetime of happy marriage for a York couple who are celebrating their golden wedding today.

Eddie Loftus met his future wife, Sheelagh, while delivering the news in Clifton, where they were both brought up and went to school, and romance blossomed.

They were married on March 2, 1963, at Clifton Methodist Church before honeymooning in London, where they “played on the escalators because we didn’t have much money”.

The couple, who live in Osbaldwick, marked their golden wedding with a spa break to the east coast and will follow that up with a sunshine holiday in the Caribbean later this year.

They have five children – Beverly, Geoffrey, Nicholas, Christopher and Rachel – and nine grandchildren.

Sheelagh, 70, still works for the Future Prospects service in York and completed a Level 4 degree in advice and guidance through Selby College when she was 67.

She said of childhood sweetheart Eddie, 69: “He had curly hair and made me laugh – and he still makes me laugh and he still has his hair.

“I suppose the recipe for a happy marriage, for us, is that we both have a sense of humour and we both share the same family values.”