SWEETHEARTS Vic Chown and Hilda Hudson met at an open-air dance in Oxford’s Florence Park during the Second World War.

The couple, who now live in Florence Park and are both 82, celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary today.

Mr Chown first asked his wife-to-be to dance in 1943, a week before her 17th birthday, after recognising her from dances at the Clarendon Press Institute.

But it took Mr Chown, then an apprentice at a printing company in St Michael’s Street, six years before he could afford to walk his sweetheart down the aisle.

They were married at St Michael at the Northgate Church, in Cornmarket Street, on June 25, 1949.

Mr Chown, who worked for the Oxford Mail for 40 years as a typesetting compositor and then a paste-up artist in the production department, said: “I asked her to dance because I recognised her, then I took her home and that was it.

“Because I was an apprentice, I wasn’t earning much money, so it wasn’t until I had been at the Oxford Mail for a year that I could afford it.”

Money continued to be tight when they were first married, with their first home being two rooms in someone else’s house in Rose Hill Road.

The couple have two children, Martin, 48, and Susan, 52, and a granddaughter, Ellie, who is six and a half.

They have rekindled their love for ballroom in their retirement, and go dancing together at least twice a week.

They marked the anniversary with lunch for 60 friends and family members at the Four Pillars Hotel in Sandford.