A MACMERRY couple have celebrated their diamond anniversary after 60 years of happy marriage.

Margaret, 83, and Leslie Somerville, 80, of Westbank Road, spent an afternoon with family to celebrate reaching the milestone.

When asked about the secret to keeping a marriage going for so long, Margaret said that. . . there wasn’t one!

She told the Courier: “I can’t think of anything really; we are happy, and we just get on with it.”

The couple first met “up the dancing” in North Berwick and sparks flew.

About a year later, the pair were married at the Methodist Church in Cockenzie on March 31, 1962.

The couple moved into their first house together in Fenton Barns shortly after, where they would raise their family.

Leslie worked in the building trade, primarily with Campbell and Smith, while Margaret worked in a variety of roles but spent most of her time with GGS Engineering as a cook.

The Somervilles have three children – Yvonne, 58, Neil, 56, and Michelle, 51 – and five grandchildren – Lee, 34, Ryan, 29, Adele, 27, Connor, 27, and Shannon, 25.

Margaret told the Courier that witnessing them all grow up and get married were the couple’s best memories.

She said: “The best [memory] was just seeing the family growing up and getting married.”

Their daughter Michelle spoke of how proud she was that they had reached the milestone but also how much they had sacrificed for the family over the years.

She said: “My dad was always working constantly to make sure we could go on holiday.

“Both have worked all their lives but they have always been there for the family.

“[I am] really proud because they’ve had, like everybody, their ups and downs and the hard times, but they were always there for us.

“They’ve been together for so long and kept on going because they constantly niggle at each other!”

Michelle said that her most cherished memory of her parents was when she had her first child.

She said: “For me, it would be when I had my son, their first grandson, and they were fantastic, and I would probably say it was one of their proudest moments.

“They were always there, always babysitting.”

Margaret and Leslie recently welcomed their first great-grandchild, Ellis – and that, Michelle thinks, is one of their proudest moments.

She said: “They’re over the moon that they’ve got a great-grandson, it was the one thing they desperately wanted.”