DIAMOND couple Dennis and Pearl Carter danced their way into each other’s hearts.

Mr and Mrs Carter, of Haylands, Portland, are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary in exactly the way they want – surrounded by their four children, 11 grandchildren, and 11 great grandchildren at the island’s Clifton Hotel.

Ill-health means it will be a quiet affair for the couple – much more restrained than the lively dance they met at 61 years ago in Mrs Carter’s home village of Stoke Under Ham in Somerset.

Then aged 19, Mrs Carter was back home after working as a nurse in an isolation hospital in Hereford.

“I was working at a hospital in South Petherton until I could get away again,” she said. “I thought about doing my finals in nursing and going to Bristol.”

But fate had other ideas for Mrs Carter, now 80, when she met 23-year-old Dennis, a former air gunner in the RAF who was born and brought up on Portland.

“The Portland boys used to have a taxi on Saturday nights and go around looking for dances and they happened to turn up at Stoke Under Ham,” said Mrs Carter. “We danced all night more or less.

“After that they used to come up on Saturday nights and Dennis would come up on Sunday on the train and I would meet him at Yeovil.

“We went out for quite a while then decided to get married at Whitsun.”

They were married in a low-key ceremony at Yeovil Register Office on May 28, 1949.

The newlyweds lived on Portland, where Mr Carter, now 84, returned to work in the quarries.

Mrs Carter believes their marriage has stood the test of time because they are both willing to give and take. “Don’t keep any secrets and talk things over,” she said. “That’s how we’ve done it anyway.”