Dance romancers celebrate diamond wedding

They met almost 70 years ago at a dance for army cadets but Bill and Edna Keay proved they have still got all the moves as they celebrated their diamond wedding.

The couple from Tipton first met in 1941 at a series of unofficial dances organised by members of the Air Training Corps, when they were 15 and 16.

Now they organise sequence dances for dozens of fellow pensioners in Tipton at Brook Street Community Centre. They have been putting together dances for more than 35 years and despite their advanced ages, they have no plans to hang up their dancing shoes just yet.

"We have always liked dancing. It was how we met," said Bill. "We used to have little dos between the Army Cadet Corps, which I was a member of, and the Girls Training Corps."

At first Bill, now 84, and Edna, now 82, just became friends, enjoying many evenings of ballroom dancing at Tipton Swimming Baths.

Any chances of romance was temporarily halted when Bill was drafted into the Army and sent to India towards the end of the Second World War. But when he returned in 1948, they fell in love and began courting each other.

"It was not love at first sight," said Edna, a former bakery worker and charity shop assistant. "We were just friends for a long time. But when Bill came out of the Army we got together. It just happened."

They were married on September 30 1950 at St Matthew's CofE Church in Dudley Road, Tipton, and moved into their first home as husband and wife in Leabrook Road.

They eventually moved to their second home in Walsall Wood after seven years and Edna also gave birth to the couple's only child, Ian, that same year in 1967, before moving to their current home in Wednesbury Oak Road, four years later.

At the time, Bill was working as a pipe fitter for the gas board but the couple still enjoyed dancing regularly for fun, switching from ballroom to sequence as trends changed.

Dancing has always been a part of their lives, so much so they can barely recall how and when they started running their own club.

But they have organised weekly sequence dances at Wednesbury Conservative Club, Coneygre Community Centre, and now Brook Street over four decades.

Edna said: "Ian was a teenager when we started running clubs.

"Bill has always organised the records and I have done the catering, making cups of tea and putting out biscuits.

"It is great exercise, it keeps you active and you make great friends. Most of our visitors are in their 60s and 70s, and they really enjoy it.

"We regularly have about 50 people here."

Dozens of their fellow dancers passed on their best wishes at the couple's latest dance, including Joan and Ronald Wright, both 74, from Great Bridge.

"We have been coming for 12 years," said Mr Wright. "We followed them from Coneygre six years ago and were even with them before then."

The retired car factory worker said: "We just love it. They are very good friends and we love them like parents."

Edna and Bill plan to toast the longevity of their marriage and their dancing groups at a meal with Ian and their two grandchildren Victoria, 26, and Joshua, 22.

The pair have no plans to hand over the reins of their dance class any time soon.

"We shall do it for as long as we can," said Edna.

Asked what the secret to a long and happy marriage was, she added: "We are friends. We fall out but we can always rely on each other."