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Catching your future wife kissing another person is perhaps not the most conventional way of meeting your life partner – but that’s how it was for Eric and Shirley Woodman, who have just celebrated 70 years of marriage.

Despite banning her from the youth club they both attended as teenagers after he found her in the embrace, Shirley obviously made a lasting impression on Eric.

Returning from his post-war service with the Royal Airforce Eric decided to check in on Shirley when he heard she was ill.

Shirley explained: “I snuck back into the youth club during the two years he was away with the forces, but one Christmas I was really poorly and my mother said there was somebody at the door who knew me.

“It was Eric – he came and found me and it went from there.”

The couple got engaged on Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation on June 2 1953 and went to London’s Bond Street for a ring.

Their early married life was spent living in a small caravan in Addlestone, in Surrey, saving up for their first house.

During that time Eric took advantage of flying lessons that were offered after being demobbed, and often flew low over the caravan to say hello to his new wife from the open cockpit of the old Tiger Moth plane.

They managed to eventually buy a house next door to Eric’s mother, and daughters Tina and Karen arrived.

The couple settled into life with Eric working in construction – with what would now be termed as a ‘project manager’ while Shirley had a career in NHS procurement.

Following retirement the couple decided on a move to Wales following a long-standing holiday friendship with a local couple who recommended Caerphilly.

Shirley’s stepfather was a miner from Merthyr – so she already had a Welsh connection.

Moving to Penyrheol in 1999, Eric and Shirley were joined by their daughter Tina five years later (who the couple joked, came for a holiday and decided to stay).

Faith is a huge part of Eric and Shirley’s life and it is what led them to being an integral part of their community.

Eric explained: “Our next door neighbours came and welcomed us when we first moved in and asked if there was anything they could help us with.

“We said we wanted to know where a church was, a doctors’, and a supermarket.”

Accepting an invitation to attend their neighbours’ church was the first step to a lasting friendship, and together, with several others, saw Eric and Shirley help establish the Gateway Church, which now runs out of Cwrt Rawlin Primary School in Castle View.

As well as getting a celebratory message from the King for their 70th anniversary on Wednesday March 5, Eric celebrated his 95th birthday last month, daughter Tina was 60, and Shirley marks her 90th birthday in May.

So what is the secret to celebrating a platinum wedding anniversary?

“We are living in our own world,” said Eric.

Shirley continued: “The secret is we talk to each other and we respect each other. Talking is the most important thing.

“I have to have Eric in my world. I also put up with him – in the nicest possible way.”