Cupar couple celebrate 60 years of marriage

John and Moira Petrie have celebrated 60 years of marriage - and admitted 50 of them had been spent in the same house in Loanhead.

Mr and Mrs Petrie were both born in Cupar, and were married on August 19 in Cupar's Masonic Hall 60 years ago.

They received their diamond wedding congratulatory card from the Queen, which Mrs Petrie, 79, said was "very nice".

"We weren't expecting it," she said. "We didn't know. We got one from the Scottish Parliament too, and one from Westminster."

Mr Petrie, 84, was in the printing trade, working at the Evening News for 30 years from 1957 until his retirement 22 years ago. He was a Linotype operator with Scotsman Publications.

"I worked in printing on the old-fashioned Linotype machine, when things were printed using the metal typesetting, before the modern ways and computers were phased in," he said.

He started at Innes Print Works in Cupar, and also worked in Kirkcaldy. He said: "I worked for a few other papers, like the Fifeshire Advertiser, now defunct."

Mr Petrie also saw National Service from the age of 18. He was in Palestine from 1945 to 1948 with the 8th Battalion Parachute Regiment.

"We were mainly doing security work," he said.

"It was at the time of the Haganah, the terrorist attacks there and the bombing of King David's hotel in Jerusalem."

He said he "lives a very quiet life nowadays".

Mrs Petrie, 79, spent her working life in a solicitor's office - when she wasn't raising a family.

She said: "I still keep myself quite busy, I have plenty of friends and visitors. And I've been collecting antique dolls, I've quite a collection, one of them is 120 years old."

And she admitted that the marriage did not get off to the best start.

"We didn't really have a honeymoon as such," she said. "We stayed with John's granny for a fortnight because John was already away working."

Mr and Mrs Petrie lived in High Wycombe in England for a few years in the early 1950s but moved back to Scotland to Kirkcaldy for a while then moved to Loanhead where they have been at the same address for 50 years.

The couple have five children, Gavin, 58, in West Yorkshire, Eileen, 56, in Irvine, and Michael, 50, who lives across the street in Loanhead, Frances, 46, in Kevock Vale, and Marian, 42, near Stirling. They have seven grandchildren, the oldest is 31 and the youngest only four years old.

They celebrated their anniversary with a garden party for the family at their house on Paradykes Avenue.

Asked what she thought makes a marriage last, Mrs Petrie said: "I don't think there's a key to it. You have to keep yourself busy."