I was approaching my 40th birthday when I first proposed. Just a few weeks later, I got married. How much simpler things were then.
Even though I’d courted my first wife-to-be for nearly seven years, the marriage didn’t last, and hit the rocks less than seven years after the ceremony.
So, after 30 years of being a single man, saying goodbye to middle age, I’d pretty much given up on finding a partner, let alone a wife.
Not so my only daughter, Laura, who never gave up on her life’s work of finding the right (or any!) woman for her dad. To get me off her hands was the family joke – but, like all the best jokes, it had the ring of truth.
Countless blind dates Laura had set up led nowhere. The bipolar alcoholic tarot-reader was a low point. Laura even signed me up with an upmarket dating agency in central London. Three dates were arranged – the first candidate was not right for me; the second vice versa; and the third we both knew was a lost cause.
A newspaper article written by my journalist daughter 12 years ago, which highlighted my predicament/suitability, had my friends assuring me potential lady friends would be queuing round the block. It was not to be.
Being single (as I have been for 60 of my 77 years) has plenty of upsides. With a number of unattached women friends roughly my age to enjoy life with, I was pretty content. So I gave up on the fruitless search as I approached my 75th birthday.
The Covid pandemic might have been the final straw – having to be masked and six feet apart was hardly conducive to making close friends. But the day the final lockdown ended in 2022, I was invited to a dinner party.
The hostess was a friend of my daughter. I was forewarned that this was to be a singles party – ‘Clean shirt, Dad, and not those trousers.’ The 12 guests were a mix of three couples, and three singles of each gender. I was left guessing which were married and which weren’t.
Was the attractive Swiss lady – placed at the furthest end of the table from me – single, or was she with the fellow with whom she seemed to be getting on so well?
I learnt she was single. But it was to be another three months before I plucked up the courage to invite Sophie out. Unattached since widowhood 14 years earlier, she had the courage to accept.
The three years since have been a joy – how wrong I was about singledom. She too has just one daughter, and now we each have one grandson.
On the third anniversary of our first meeting, I decided I’d pop the question.
I had shared my intention with my daughter. And I’d asked Sophie’s daughter for her permission to seek her mother’s hand in marriage.
For the poor woman herself, though, my question came as something of a bombshell.
We were in a restaurant. Our meal was over, and I made my unprepared speech. She would need to consult her daughter, she said. Not the answer I’d hoped for but, as she left the table to make the call, I quietly congratulated myself on my forethought in speaking with my potential stepdaughter in advance.
A few minutes later, we celebrated with a glass of champagne. Good news (like bad) travels fast, and very soon I was enjoying the warmth of friends who managed to hide their surprise that I had finally found the perfect woman.
I seem to be worryingly on trend, too. Getting lucky in love in later life is having a cultural moment.
Maureen Lipman, 78, has just proposed to a business consultant called David Turner, also 78. Turner hadn’t been on a date in 52 years when he first went for dinner with Lipman, who’d been widowed twice previously.
Abba star Björn Ulvaeus, 79, has just got married, for the third time, to a 51-year-old.
And so to our wedding. We oldies (my Swiss widow is just four years younger than me) can’t afford to hang about. This coming March is the date. As we both live in London, that is where we’ll tie the knot.
It probably won’t be a big wedding in church – so I was a little shaken when my fiancée asked me if there was a budget.
I have written in this magazine before about why funerals beat weddings – fewer speeches, better music and no professional photographers delaying you from getting a glass of fizz.
That remains my view. But there needs to be an exception to every rule, and this March will bring it.
