Reunited teenage sweethearts finally marry 60 years after parents forced them apart

Do we ever really get over our first love?

For whatever reason things don’t work out – age, circumstance, obstacles – it’s hard to recreate the wholehearted innocence with which we give ourselves over to that first love experience.

We often end up with another partner, a wonderful person who becomes the love of our life, but many people still carry a torch, no matter how low the flame, for the first man or woman who inducted them into the world of romantic love.

Eileen and Warner Billington can tell you all about this. Back in 1950, as teens in Smethwick, England, the pair fell madly in love.

As Bill tells the Western Morning News, Warner spotted Eileen, then 16 years old, walking with her sister Margaret down the street.

“I saw her and I was smitten,’ he says. “I waited for them to come out of Margaret’s boyfriend’s house and come back up the road… I got a pair of garden shears and pretended to cut the hedge outside my parents’ house."

"When they passed, I said, ‘Hello Margs, who’s that with you?’ and we got talking.”

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Warner wrote to Eileen while he was stationed with the Royal Air Force in South Wales. After that first letter, they wrote to each other every day.

When Eileen turned 18, 19-year-old Warner wanted to get married. Her father nixed the union, saying his daughter was too young – a rarity for that time. Disappointed, Warner decided not to wait.

“I thought Eileen’s father was wrong, but I didn’t propose. Somehow, we just parted after that. It was my fault, I just went my own way.”

By the end of the decade, both had married other partners and started families. Eileen opened a hotel in Cornwall with her husband, Jack Lenton. They had a happy marriage.

Though she didn’t speak to Warner again, Eileen kept a photo they’d taken together during a romantic trip to the seaside in 1950. She kept it at her sister’s house for fear that her husband would ask her to get rid of it.

Eileen’s husband passed away in 2006. From a friend of Warner’s who would often stay in her hotel, she learned four years later that his own wife had recently died. That’s when she decided to pick up the phone.

Also see: Then and now photos of couples married over the past 50 years

Just like their earlier correspondence by post, the couple soon began to communicate daily by phone. A year later, they plucked up the courage to meet in person. With their families’ blessings, they moved in together shortly after and, 60 years later after their first attempt, finally tied the knot in 2011.

"A couple of months later, I asked Eileen to marry me,” Warner tells Western Morning News. “I said: 'I don't want to introduce you as my partner but as my wife.'"

To grow your heart another three sizes, Eileen caps off this most amazing story of the power of undying first love:

"We have simply picked up where we left off. It's like being teenage sweethearts all over again. It's as though we have never been apart," she explains.

"As well as loving each other, we are good companions, just as we were when we first met. In fact, we are just like an old married couple."