A SOLDIER’S sweetheart has won the title of Mrs Oxfordshire in a new competition.

The contest, launched last year, is open to all women above 21 who are married.

Michelle Spencer, who lives at Dalton Barracks, Abingdon, will now compete at the Park Hall Hotel in Lancashire next March for the title of Mrs Galaxy UK.

Mrs Spencer, 22, revealed how she became a wedded woman by proposing to her soldier boyfriend during a leap year while he was in Afghanistan.

She popped the question via email while childhood sweetheart Private Richard Spencer, 25, was serving in 2008.

Mrs Spencer beat more than a hundred married women, and will compete at a glittering ceremony next year for the national title in the competition organised by Galaxy Pageants UK.

Soldier Katrina Hodge was last year’s winner. Rules say the contest has no size, height or weight restrictions as it wants to “celebrate the beauty of every woman”.

The couple have been dating since they were 15 and married in November 2008.

Mrs Spencer said: “I proposed to Richard while he was out in Afghanistan, on February 29 in 2008.

“I was just missing him so much and so I emailed him. He couldn’t get the message until the next day, so I didn’t sleep thinking about it.

“The next day, he phoned me and just said ‘yeah’.

“I could hear all the guys in Afghanistan shouting and cheering.”

But life as a service wife can be difficult, she said.

“Last year, when he was in Afghanistan, it knocked me for six. It was hard.

“At one point they lost him at an airport out there and people were telling me he’d been taken by the Taliban. He eventually turned up.

“But that’s his job and he has to fight for his country. I knew what I was signing up for.”

She spoke of her delight at winning the beauty title: “I was really happy to be chosen. We only moved to Abingdon last year, when Richard was posted here.

“So even though I’ve got a Mancunian accent, this is my home now.”

Pte Spencer, a driver for the Royal Logistics Corps, said: “I’m proud of her and I hope she does well, she’s going to do lots of preparing for it now.

“I’m looking forward to seeing her on stage, where me and her mum and dad will be there to cheer her on.”

rpope@oxfordmail.co.uk