Bill & Val's big surprise 'WE MARRIED IN OUR EIGHTIES!'

The life-long friends were surprised to be bitten by the love bug

- Kasia De Vydt-Jillings

For 50 years, Val McClean and Bill Jack celebrated wedding anniversaries together, not as a couple, but as lifelong family friends, never imagining in their eighties, they'd celebrate it as each other's husband and wife.

“If anyone asked me a year ago if I would marry Bill, I would have said never,” laughs Val, 83. “But then there’s the old saying, ‘Never say never.”

They first met more than half a century ago at their sons’ football game. Bill was the team manager and Val’s late first husband Alan was the coach.

As their children became friends, the parents did too, including Bill’s late first wife Carol.

“Our families just liked one another,” recalls Val. “We started having meals together every weekend at one house or the other and playing cards into the evening.”

And as their wedding anniversaries both fell on December 16, it became tradition to mark the occasion together, usually with dinner and a show in the city.

Former teachers Val and Alan met in Australia, where they worked at the same school after immigrating from the UK in 1963.

“I took one look at him and said yes,” shares Val. They moved to New Zealand in May 1967, with their children Fiona and Ian.