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Love in the afternoon in Laragh for Gay & Kathleen

t was a beautiful drive on a sunny spring day.” Thus spoke one half of the nation’s next most romantic couple — after Leo ’n’ Matt, natch — of how she and her husband of five decades celebrated St Valentine’s Day. Kathleen Watkins and Gay Byrne had lunch at The Wicklow Heather Restaurant in Laragh. “Gay had whiskey and I had water,” the author of Pigin of Howth and, Happy Christmas, Pigin, told me.

I asked Kathleen was she the romantic type. Her answer: “Deep down I am...”

Well, she did marry Mr B on June 25, 1964, in the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Saggart, Co Dublin. They have never been apart since. Except for Friday nights, once upon a time.