Childhood Sweethearts Separated by Disapproving Father Finally Wed — 63 Years Later

What separated them?

Like something from a film: childhood sweethearts from Southampton who are finally tying the knot after 63 years apart. Bill Labram and Peggy Fryer, both 80, fell in love in 1947 after growing up on the same street. Their courtship was cut short by Peggy's father, George, who felt his 16-year-old daughter was too young to be dating. Heartbroken, each went their separate way, married other people, and raised families — though both thought about each other daily.

What happened in between?

Despite living in the same city for the next sixty years, they never saw each other again, and each believed the other had moved on. Peggy met her husband Tony at a youth club and married him in 1952, going on to have two sons, four grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter. Bill married June in 1952 and had two children and four grandchildren.

How did they find each other?

It was only when Bill's wife passed away in 2007 that a friend sent Peggy the death notice from the local newspaper along with an old photograph of the young couple. A divorced Peggy decided to contact Bill, tracked him down through the phonebook, and the two were soon reunited.

"I feel like we've been given a second chance at love," Peggy, a retired secretary, said. "I've thought about him every day for all these years." Bill, a retired Southampton City Council manager, added: "We were in love then and we're in love now. When I knocked on the door she said 'oh you're early' — but I wasn't. I was 60 years late."

What's the ending?

Just weeks after finding each other again, Bill proposed, and the couple moved from Southampton to Bridport, Dorset. Their extended families attended the ceremony. Sixty-three years is a long time to keep a promise nobody made — and then, against all the odds, to keep it anyway.