No-one could accuse Bob Adams of moving too fast when he finally wed his childhood sweetheart - 70 years after their first date.

The pair fell for each other when they were just 13 years old but when Bob joined the Navy and was sent away to war, a brief fling with an Australian left Joy so broken hearted they didn't speak for half a century.

But when they met up again at a surprise reunion five years ago they both realised it was about time they rekindled their romance.

And with little time to waste they finally became man and wife last weekend.

Joy, 84, said: "From when I first met him while playing on the local park with friends, I always thought I would marry him.

"What I didn't realise was that by the time he got around to popping the question, he wouldn't be able to get down on one knee, because he'd be too old to get back up again.

"Not many men make the girls of their dreams wait 70 years."

The couple fell for each other as teenagers while spending the evenings playing with friends at the local park in Worthing.

Joy was quickly smitten and even when Bob left school at 14 to join the Navy in 1937, she waited for him.

But soon after he returned from a stint out in the pacific in 1947, a massive row was sparked when Joy discovered a love letter from a young woman Bob had shared a brief fling with while he was away.

Joy said: "I always thought Bob was the one for me so I waited for him to come home. We would write to each other while he was away and I missed him a lot. He was the only man for me.

"When he came home we started dating again, but then one day a letter arrived from a girl he had met in Australia and he explained she was the daughter of a family he had been staying with out there. They had become close.

"I was upset but thought, you've had your chance.

"While he'd been away I had also become friendly with a young man who kept telling me he wanted to marry me, so just months after my split from Bob I accepted Jack Street's proposal. It was a good decision as we had 35 years of very happy marriage which gave us our daughters, Hazel and Valerie, who I love dearly.

"But sadly I was widowed in 1982 and stayed single for 20 years."

Meanwhile In the same year as Joy's wedding, Bob also went on to marry someone else - his next door neighbour Eileen Synnott.

So when Bob quit the Navy and moved to Canada to start a new life and a family, the childhood sweethearts didn't speak again for 50 years.

But tragically Bob was also widowed in 2001 and in a bid to deal with his grief took a trip back to his old home town of Worthing to meet back up with old friends - including Joy's brother Vic.

Bob said: "I was staying with Vic when Joy popped in for a swim in the June. In all those years, it was like we hadn't really been apart.

"She was still beautiful and we seemed to just pick up where we left off - we didn't stop talking - well she didn't.

"Straight away I realised we still had something special, so pretty much as soon as I got back to Canada, I booked another flight and came back to visit her again in August."

The pair then lived together for more than four years until Bob finally popped the question in January during a holiday in Canada.

Joy said: "We got married On March the 14 at a private ceremony up in Derbyshire. It was just the two of us and a couple of witnesses. It was incredibly emotional.

"It's so lovely to have a companion again."

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