It is not every day that a proposal of marriage is made down on one knee … on the top of a double-decker bus.
Former Dumfries and Galloway Standard printer, Robert MacRae, certainly conducted his big moment in style to Elizabeth (nee Jamieson) as they’ve been married for 60 years.
Known as Bobby and Liz, the diamond wedding couple from Hardthorn Road, Dumfries, also have the ticket to a long and happy married life: “We made a vow ‘till death us do part’ and our family means the world to us.”
Bobby, aged 83, was born in an air raid shelter during WWII in Dumbarton on the second night of a 1941 German bombing blitz on Clydebank.
Although they lived in Dumfries, his Belfast-born mum, Edith, had moved for the birth, to Dumbarton – where his dad, Robert, an electrical engineer at the Chapelcross former nuclear power station near Annan, hailed from.
Shortly after the birth they moved back to Dumfries where Bobby grew up, firstly attending Noblehill Primary and then St Michael’s Primary when the family moved to Troqueer.
He was educated at Dumfries High School and left aged 15.
Meanwhile, Liz, now aged 81, was born Mill of Strachan near Banchory in Aberdeenshire and moved, in 1947, with her forester dad, Robert, and mum, Catherine, when she was just four-years-old to live in Moffat.
Due to her dad’s job, they lived on the Auchen Castle estate and she attended the old Moffat Primary and Moffat Academy schools, leaving aged 15. Her family moved to Ae Village in 1961.
Bobby began getting his foot in the door of the printing world training with Dinwoodies – just a couple of doors down from the old Standard offices off the Dumfries High Street.
And when his hope of an apprenticeship didn’t happen straight away, he returned to school for a short spell, until he was offered the six-year apprenticeship with Dinwoodies which set him up.
From there he moved to a printers in Leith near Edinburgh, at the age of 22, for six months.
His career then took him to Accrington in 1963 and then back to Dumfries in October 1969 when he came to work for the Dumfries and Galloway Standard at the old High Street offices and then, when it closed, at the new presses in the Cuckoo Bridge site until printing there ended.
He then went to work as a printer in Annan for the newspaper publisher of the Dumfries Courier, Annandale Observer, Annandale Herald and Moffat News, retiring in 2006.
Liz, meanwhile, worked as a cashier clerk at McGeorge’s knitwear factory until she married in 1964.
It was while she was walking on the High Street at lunchtime work breaks that she caught the eye of Bobby, who used to sit on a bench at the Midsteeple with his lunch.
Knowing someone who worked with her, he quizzed them about her before one lunchtime plucking up the courage to walk alongside her and ask her out – telling his family they’d reached Bank Street before she said yes.
Their first date was on April 15, 1962, and they went to the cinema.
She was 19 and he was 21.
Their relationship stayed strong – despite him moving to Edinburgh and Altrincham – and then came the proposal with them getting engaged officially two days later on her 21st birthday and they married on September 26, 1964 at Kirkmichael Church, Parkgate.
The reception was held at the Kings Arms Hotel and, after spending their wedding night in The County Hotel, they travelled to Ayr the next day for their honeymoon.
They raised four children – Lorna Maxwell, Sharon Brown, Gail Moir and Gordon MacRae – and also dote on eight grandchildren and five grand-children in a close family who enjoyed a family gathering at their home on anniversary day, before a celebratory meal the next evening at the Nith Hotel.