A couple from Great Stukeley celebrate their 65th wedding ­anniversary on Wednesday.

Thomas Cook met his wife, then Jean Maile, outside her school in 1943 and they started dating in the December.

The couple eventually started going to confirmation classes together at All Saints’ Church, in Huntingdon, and shared the same hymn book when they were confirmed.

“We broke up for a little bit because I was called for National Service,” said Mr Cook, 87.

“But we wrote to each other almost every day.”

The romance continued after Mr Cook returned and they were married at St Bartholemew’s Church on July 9, 1949 – he was 23 and Jean was 20.

Mr Cook went to work at WH Smiths Printing, in Huntingdon where he remained for 48 years, while Mrs Cook worked as the postmistress in Great Stukeley.

The couple still live in the bungalow they built more than 60 years ago in Church Road.

When asked about their secret to a long marriage, Mrs Cook, 84, said: “We just enjoy the same sort of lifestyle.”

Their only daughter Hazel Cook joked the secret was “patience”.

Mr and Mrs Cook are grandparents to three adult grandsons and one great-granddaughter, aged four.

To mark their anniversary, Mr Cook wrote a poem which closed with: “My love for you is just as strong – as it was in those years past.

“Just don’t understand the folks – who say that love don’t last.”