Secret of 70-year marriage: We’ve got compatible brains
6th sense includes what to eat
Clifford, left, with Queen
KNOWING what their other half is thinking – even what they want to eat – has helped this couple stay happily married for 70 years.
Clifford and Hilda Miller have been of like mind since falling for each other in 1948.
Clifford, 93, said: “You’ve got to have compatible brains. If she asks me what I want for dinner tonight, I might think ‘sausages’. Before
I’ve even said anything, she’ll say ‘let’s have sausage and mash’.
“We think alike all the time... The chances you get to trip up in life are easy. I know people whose marriages have got messy and they get divorced.
“But I just think, how could I ever divorce this woman?”
Hilda, 89, said: “I’ve never, ever wanted anyone but him.
“We argue a bit, of course, but apart from that we’ve had such a happy life. And he doesn’t get it all his own way.” When she first saw Clifford at a cricket match in Chingford, Essex, in 1948, Hilda knew he was the one. She said: “I saw him ride by on a bike and I said to my friend, ‘That’s the fella I want to marry’.” They met properly at a party later that year.
Clifford said: “It was what you call true love. I knew that straight away.” They were engaged within the year and wed on Boxing Day in 1949.
Clifford said about their honeymoon in Sussex: “We stayed in this old cottage. It didn’t even have a toilet inside.” The greatgrandparents, of Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, had five children. Clifford, a Daily Mirror graphics executive for 32 years, met the Queen in 1979 when she visited the newsroom, then in Holborn, Central London.
And what will Clifford and Hilda be having for their platinum anniversary tea? “Sausage and mash,” they reply laughing.
HILDA ON TAKING A SHINE TO CLIFFORD INSTANTLY
I saw him ride by on a bike & said, ‘That’s the fella I want to marry’