She was a maid of honour to the Trowbridge carnival queen dancing the night away and he was a young man of 19 watching from the sidelines – but 62 years after their chance meeting, Gordon and June Harper are celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary.

The Trowbridge couple, who live at Quilling Close, met at the 1949 carnival dance in the town and quickly became an item.

Mr Harper, 81, recalled how they first started dating on their lunch breaks. He said: “At the carnival dance in the Town Hall I was a young lad watching on and wishing I had the courage to ask her for a dance.

“In the weeks following the dance, I would watch June scurrying through the park in the lunch hour on her way to Chapmans.

“Eventually, through a mutual friend at Chapmans I got to speak to her and meetings in the lunch hour became quite frequent.

“During one meeting I was invited along to the Chapmans Christmas dance and I danced with June for most of that evening and walked her home.”

A year later the pair were engaged and married eight months afterwards at St Thomas’s Church.

Six decades later 78-year-old Mrs Harper, nee Watson, and Mr Harper celebrated their diamond wedding on August 4 with 30 guests at a dinner at Cumberwell Park Golf Club. They have three children – Wendy, Diane and Alison – and four grandchildren, who all live abroad, in Spain, Switzerland and New Zealand.

Mrs Harper was born in Hilperton in 1933. As a child the family moved to The Down in Trowbridge and she was educated at Margaret Stancomb, Parochial and Nelson Haden schools.

She worked as a shorthand typist at Wilts United Dairies, Chapmans and AE Farr of Westbury.

Mr Harper was born in Rode in 1930 and was educated at the village school and Frome Grammar. At 16 he started a five-year engineering apprenticeship at NH Engineering in St George’s Works.

Gordon’s apprenticeship meant his compulsory two year National Service was delayed. He joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers six months before their wedding and the couple spent most of the next 18 months apart, with his last 12 months being served in Germany.

Mr Harper said: “We wrote to each other every day, then after the Army I returned to work at NH Engineering.”

In 1957 the couple, with their first two children, emigrated to Toronto, Canada. They returned a year later to live in Stroud, Gloucestershire where they stayed for 42 years.

In 2000 they returned to their roots in Trowbridge.