From bumping into your soulmate down the local pub to hooking up via a dating app, there are endless ways to meet your match. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Gayle Ritchie meets three generations of Courier Country couples
Roses are red, violets are blue. How you met your partner says a lot about you. As the annual celebration of love approaches on Tuesday, we look at dating through the ages and speak to three couples who met in very different ways.
There’s Will and Jean Gibb, who enjoyed a traditional courtship, enjoying their first date at a dance in the 1950s, going on to mark their Diamond wedding anniversary last year.
As the annual celebration of love creeps up on Tuesday, we look at dating through the ages, and speak to three couples who met in very different ways.
Then there’s Phill and Paula Rogers. They met at a Dundee pub in 1991 and have been inseparable ever since.
Finally, Kat Marshall and Sally Melville have been together for three years, having met via an online dating site for lesbians.
Here the three couples share their stories…
JEAN & WILL GIBB
Back in the 50s, it was the norm to spy your husband or wife-to-be while out dancing, and a hotspot for such meetings was Dundee’s Palais.
It was here that Will and Jean Gibb enjoyed their first date in 1952.
The Invergowrie couple married in 1956 and enjoyed their Diamond wedding anniversary last year.
“I’d seen Will a couple of times before we went on our first date to the Palais,” reveals Jean, 82.
“When I was 12, I saw him walking down the Hilltown after a football match. Then, when I was 15, I bumped into on the Wellgate steps when I was going to work as a clerkess in the Central Library. We started talking and he asked me to go to the dance after work.
“Back then, the Palais was the place where everyone went to dance and meet people. I’d been going there every weekend with my friend so it was lovely to dance with Will.”
Both Jean and Will shared a mutual love of Scottish dance music and it’s this that brought them together.
Recalling nights at the Masonic Hall in Downfield, Jean says: “They held these old-fashioned ‘diddling’ competitions. They sound funny but they were great entertainment, with people playing accordions, whistles, fiddles, mouth organs, the Jew’s harp and singing.”
The couple dated for five years before marrying in 1956 and had their first baby the following year.
William worked as a tractorman and laterally, as a “jack of all trades” at Ninewells Hospital, doing everything from driving forklift trucks to huge cranes.
The couple, who are grandparents-of-two, consider themselves quite modern-thinking, but Jean doesn’t imagine she would have liked to meet her soulmate online.
“I find that idea very cold,” she says. “It might sound old-fashioned, but I think face-to-face is better.
“I don’t think you can know a person from looking at their profile online – you really have to see the person and speak to them.
“It’s not for us but then times have changed. I’m glad Will and I met the way we did. It seems much more natural.”
Perhaps it was easier back then? It was normal for young people to hang out at dances whereas these days, there’s no such obvious hub.
“I suppose that’s very true,” says Will, 87. “We had it made!”
Despite being in their 80s, the couple lead active lifestyles, with regular outings, afternoon teas, breakfast clubs and – for Jean – a keep fit class.
What about dancing? “Not too much these days!” laughs Will, who recently had a hernia operation. “But never say never!”
PHILL & PAULA ROGERS
Phill Rogers met his wife-to-be, Paula, in a pub in Dundee in January 1991.
They didn’t know each other but they had been at the same funeral and were at The Cafe Club in Meadowside.
“There were just four of us in the bar – me, my friend, Paula and the barmaid who was also a mutual friend of Paula,” says Phill, 45.
“Paula and I got talking and spent three hours playing table football. Then, later that week, Paula and I bumped into each other again across at Foreigners bar in Meadowside.
“We were both into rock music and had being going there for years but had never noticed or acknowledged each other until that first night.”
The following night, they both ended up at The Cafe Club “by coincidence” as Paula was about to go home.
“I walked in and she decided to stay and have a few more drinks,” says Phill.
“We talked again and later moved on to Jasper’s, a rock night club which used to be under the Tay Hotel.
“I was a 19-year-old with a leather jacket, jeans and T-shirt, working as an apprentice architect’s technician while Paula was 23 and between jobs. I was a toy boy!”
Three months after their first meeting, Phill moved into Paula’s flat on Dundee’s Bell Street.
And that same year, in August, they enjoyed their first holiday together in Crete.
“Back then, still am really, I was a hopeless romantic and, as it was the Glorious 12th, I proposed,” smiles Phill.
“We were sitting together on a bench on this beautiful Greek island as the sun set when I popped the question. It was perfect.”
The couple – who have a son, Jack, 20, and a daughter, Cassi, 23 – married in 1994 and mark their 23rd anniversary this year.
Phill, who is the manager of a technology and entertainment store, says he would have been “too scared” and “too naive” to tried online dating.
“It was easy for Paula and I to meet in a bar; it was very organic. We shared the same interests and got talking about music and soon became a rock couple.
“I suppose we were moving in the same circles. Every weekend we would go to the same pubs so it was almost as if it was a forced interaction when it ended up just being four of us in the pub that day. The fates aligned and brought us together, so I suppose we were very lucky.
“I wouldn’t have had the gumption to try online dating these days so hats off to anyone who does.”
Paula, 49, an administrative officer for the Department of Works and Pensions, says having mutual friends allowed the couple to meet.
“While they were talking to each other what else could we do but chat?,” she smiles.
“We discovered we had lot in common and probably more importantly, enjoyed each other’s company.
“I still find it hard to believe that we’d both been spending time in the same places for a couple of years but never noticed each other until that night and we’ve been inseparable since then.”
KAT MARSHALL & SALLY MELVILLE
Online dating sites are booming, and they come in every shape and size. No matter your views, hobbies or sexual orientation, there’s a site for you – from those for older daters (www.seniormatch.com), professional singles (elitesingles.co.uk) and single parents (kno.org.uk) to sites for pet lovers (petloversdatingonline.com).
With sites like these, you can save time and money scouring clubs and pubs in the vague hope that Mr or Mrs Right might walk through the door, or fall into your arms.
Dundee couple Kat Marshall and Sally Melville met on Blendr, which Kat describes as “the lesbian version of Grindr” (a gay dating site) back in 2013.
Kat, 23, had met a few other girls via the website but without much success. “We’d both dated before but hadn’t been lucky in love,” she says.
“I was only 19 at the time while Sally was 18 and we were just looking for a date. While Match.com and Tinder tend to be aimed at straight people, we were both on Blendr. We were just swiping (looking through online profiles) for fun!”
After chatting online while Sally was on holiday in Sri Lanka, the couple’s first date was at Pride Glasgow – Scotland’s largest LGBT celebration.
“Sally was an hour late – we always joke about that,” says Kat.
“But we had instant chemistry. We spent the whole day together and had dinner in the evening. It was perfect.”
The first year of their relationship was tough as Sally was living in Dundee while Kat was studying social care in Aberdeen.
Eventually, Kat, who’s now in her first year of a psychology and counselling degree at Abertay University, upped sticks and moved in with Sally in Dundee.
Sally, 21, who is president of Dundee University LGBT Society and in her fourth year of a geography degree, says: “It’s harder when you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender as you never know whether people are gay or straight when you’re out and about randomly.
“You also don’t know whether they might have prejudices. “It’s really not easy to meet strangers and hope they might be a match so we found online dating a great help.
“Social skills have changed and you don’t need to physically approach people these days. It can be really nerve-racking speaking to people in the flesh.”
But, says Sally, as much as they have been lucky, they do think it’s a bit of a “fluke” as they know lots of people who have been online and never meet their dream man or woman.
“There are still loads of ways to meet people, whether at university, at work, or in a bar, but online worked for us,” says Kat.
“There’s still a little bit of a stigma about meeting people online, but if it works for you, then fantastic.
“Everything works for different people and it’s lovely to hear stories of couples who met at dances in the 40s, 50s and beyond. To each, their own!”
