A WIRRAL couple who got together during the Merseybeat era celebrate 60 years of marriage today.
Anne and Alan O’Connor tied the knot on Thursday, September 21, 1963 and will enjoy a Diamond Wedding Anniversary lunch with friends and family this weekend to mark '60 glorious years'.
Recalling how they met, son Sean, told the Globe: "Working and courting in Liverpool in the early 1960s, they were lucky enough to see the explosion of the Merseybeat sound across the region.
"They started dating and saw many of the local bands that would go on to be successful and some world famous.
"At the Cavern they saw John Lennon’s The Quarrymen many times. They also attended gigs by the likes of Rory Storm and the Hurriances, Billy J Kramer and The Fourmost.
"At the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton they saw Gerry and the Pacemakers as well as Freddy and the Dreamers. At Birkenhead Rugby Club, Anne and Alan watched Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen play."
Alan met Anne in 1962, when he was an apprentice heating and ventilation engineer in Liverpool city centre.
He’d first noticed Anne when she was commuting to work at May Harper’s hairdressing salon above Fuller’s Restaurant opposite Central Station.
Sean said: "In August 1962, Anne had broken off an engagement to her fiance. That same night, she met Alan at the Blue Nile Café in Hamilton Square.
"He noticed that she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring anymore and started to chat to her. He walked her home to the house in Paterson Street that she shared with her parents and her brother Paul, who was in the Navy.
He then walked all the way up Bidston Hill to his parents’ house in Royden Road on the Overchurch Estate.
With the launch of The Beatles’ first LP, Please, Please Me, in March 1963, Liverpool exploded as a centre for music and fashion. Anne remembers it as a "wonderful time".
She said: "Alan would buy the latest records from NEMS on Great Charlotte Street which was owned by Brian Epstein’s family and managed by Epstein himself.
"NEMS sold musical instruments, furniture and the latest record releases which customers could listen to in a booth whilst they wore headphones.
"The Top 20 was displayed in the windows at NEMS and was updated every Friday. It’s through visiting NEMS that The Beatles were first introduced to Epstein. And it’s from Brian Epstein himself that Alan bought his first radiogram."
As well as music, Alan was a huge film buff and frequented the many cinemas that used to populate Birkenhead and screen the biggest Hollywood releases such as Lawrence of Arabia as well as the new British Kitchen sink films like A Kind of Loving.
Alan and Anne married at St Laurence’s church in Birkenhead and one of Anne’s hairdressing clients loaned her two yellow American Cadillacs for the day and local soprano, Valerie Masterson, sang at the service.
After the wedding, they moved into their first flat in Reedville in Oxton and started married life together- even buying their first car- a Lancaster; though neither of them could drive at the time.
They bought their first house - a brand new dormer house in Eastham- for what seemed at the time to be a fortune - £3,975.
This was a period when the average wage was £19 a year. In order to save the £50 they needed for the deposit, they moved in with Anne’s parents in Birkenhead.
In 1964, Glenys was born, who is now a classroom assistant at Christ the King School in Eastham. Alan Junior was born 1966, followed by Sean in 1968. Both attended St Anselm’s College.
Alan works as a civil servant and Sean as a producer and writer in TV, Film and radio.
Asked what is the secret to their long and happy marriage, Anne is clear, it’s ‘Loyalty, trust and love. We share everything,’ she says, ‘and we’ve never rowed.’
Son Sean told the Globe that Alan had had a lonely childhood as his mother had died during the war leaving him to be raised by his aunts.
But when he met Anne, he really did find his soul-mate: "I think it was on their 40th Wedding Anniversary" Sean remembers, "that dad sent mum a card – beautifully hand-written- saying To the Most Beautiful Girl in the World, Who Grew Up to be the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.
"He adored her as soon as he laid eyes on her, all those years ago. And what’s more- six decades later, he still does."
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