Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Couple celebrate 65th wedding anniversary
A loving couple who met in Airdrie were delighted to feel blue recently.
For Alex and Betty Gault were celebrating 65 years of marriage and received a letter from the Queen, marking their blue sapphire wedding anniversary.
Now living in Carluke, the sweethearts married in August 1956 following a four-year courtship, having first clapped eyes on each other at the top cross in their former home of Airdrie.
“I was going to sing at the Women’s Guild and he was going to the Boys’ Brigade in the High Church,” Betty recalls.
“That was the 19th of February 1952. I was 14 and Alex was 16.
“We both lived in Airdrie. I stayed in Park Crescent in Whinhall, and Alex in Mack Street. He went to Chapelside school and I was at Victoria.”
Alex and Betty, now 86 and 83-years-old respectively, were married in Airdrie’s High Church before they set up their marital home in Petersburn.
Betty said: “That was our first house. We went on to have a newsagents shop down by Rochsolloch School in Kippen Street.
“We both worked in the shop. And I worked all my days.”
The couple went on to have five children – Alex, Isobel, David, William and the youngest, Jamie.
Betty once appeared in our sister paper the Daily Record, as a “Record Breaker”, having had children in four different decades.
She explained: “I had a boy in the 50s, a boy and a girl in the 60s, a boy in the 70s and another in the 80s.
“I was 43 when Jamie was born and we moved to Wishaw just after that. Isobel and I were pregnant at the same time. My youngest son Jamie, and my eldest grandson are the same age; they are 41 now.”
The couple have 10 grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren.
And as well as bringing up their own children and running a business, another 13 lucky children were fortunate enough to be fostered by the caring couple.
“The last two spent two-and-ahalf years with us,” said Betty.
Alex and Betty gave up working at the shop and started making and selling soft furnishings from the garage of their Wishaw home, which was turned into a shop.
Having retired more than two decades ago they still like to get out and about every day.
“Even if it’s just for our breakfast and back home,” said Alex.
In addition to eating out, the couple enjoy taking coach tours, and holidaying abroad, in Portugal and Spain.
Betty believes the element of surprise is the key to a happy and lengthy marriage.
She said: “I have all the packing done and just say, ‘we’re off to the airport tomorrow’.”
Alex admits: “I never know until the day before we’re going away that we’re going. She keeps it a secret.”
The couple’s great sense of humour also seems to have played its part in the longevity of their marriage.
“You have to learn to live with crabbitness,” Betty joked.
“I got a tattoo for my 80th birthday that says ‘Grumpy’ – his nickname – with a wee red heart on it.”
“Arguing is the key to a long marriage,” Alex added.
“You need to compromise but Betty wins all the time. Three life sentences and we’d have been out by now. But I just couldn’t do without her. She is an angel.”