Kevin and Betty’s big night
KEVIN and Betty Kelly celebrated Golden Wedding Anniversary with a party in Donegans exactly 50 years to the day that they married back in 1967.
Originally from Beaulieu, Kevin met Betty (nee Conaghy) from Yellowbatter at a local Hop.
They had their first date on Termonfeckin Bridge and the rest, as they say, is history.
Kevin is well known to many in Drogheda from his time with Bus Eireann where he worked first as a driver and then as an inspector.
And many years before the couple’s meeting Kevin was a familiar face to Betty’s father, who coincidentally was also a bus driver.
‘Granddad, Mammys father, told the story of how he used to pick the kids up on the Baltray road and he’d be waiting for ‘young Kelly’ as he’d call him to make sure he got to school and it turned out that that was Dad. So they had a history and a connection even before they got together,’ the couple’s daughter Gillian told the Drogheda Independent.
The couple lived in Oldcastle, County Meath for a short time before moving to Tenure where they reared their seven children Jim, Stephen, Mark, Gillian, Darren, Janice and Karl.
Amazingly, Betty is also from a family of seven with five boys and two girls so her own family exactly mirrored that of her birth family. THE couple were joined by all seven of their children at the party as well as many of their adored grandchildren. The couple, who held their wedding reception in The Neptune Hotel in Bettystown, had spent their honeymoon in Galway and their family treated them to a night away in the G Hotel in Galway on their anniversary weekend before completing the celebrations with the party in Donegans.
‘ The party in Donegans was on the exact day of their wedding, Monday, June 5th and it was a bank holiday Monday the year they got married too,’ said Gillian. ‘ We had a Mass for them on Monday morning, which Fr Hickey celebrated especially for them, and then we had the lunch in Donegans which was lovely.’
They were joined by their family and Betty’s bridesmaid on the day, Jim’s sister Geraldine Kelly, and Jim’s best man, Betty’s brother Gerard Conaghy, were also there for the celebrations.
The beautiful cake for the event was made by McCloskeys Bakery. ‘ THEY had a great time, it was a lovely day,’ said Gillian. ‘It was the first time in a long time that the whole family was together and my brother Jim drove up that morning from his home in Cork with the kids so it was lovely to have us all there together.’