VALENTINE'S SPECIAL

With later life marriages on the rise, we talk to two first-timers who fell for their spouses just when they thought they might never meet ‘the one’

Traditionally, marriage is a milestone you expect to hit in your twenties or thirties. But according to the Office for National Statistics, the number of people over 50 getting married for the first time nearly doubled between 2014 and 2022, with 20,506 tying the knot in 2022 alone. Last year, comedian Miranda Hart hit the headlines after revealing she’d married for the first time aged 51. Here, two first-time brides share the joy of finding their husbands in later life.

‘Frank Sinatra was right: love is wasted on the young’

VIRGINIA BLACKBURN

As far as first dates go, you wouldn’t have thought this was going to be a remarkable one. We were meeting on a park bench, with a bit of drizzle in the air; both of us as nervous as teenagers.

But that day, 4 June 2020, changed my life. Six months later we were engaged; two years later we were married. At the age of 60 I became a first-time bride to my husband, Justin Urquhart-Stewart, the uncontested love of my life.

You don’t think that, as you enter ‘act three’, you will find the happiness that previously eluded you, but that’s what happened to me. I had actually first met Justin, who is seven years older than me, in 1994 as he is a high-profile investment manager and I was a financial journalist, but he was married and we lost touch.