The offer of fish and chips led to an Oxford couple celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary today.
Horace 'Mac' McKinley and his wife, Kathleen, both now 81, met over the top of a wall.
Mr McKinley was recovering from a glider crash in Army barracks in The Slade, Cowley, Oxford. He and a friend were peering over the wall when Mr McKinley's future wife passed by.
He said: "I got chatting to this girl who was walking by the barracks, she offered to get us some fish and chips and that was that."
Mr McKinley served in the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire Regiment before the Second World War. He was based in India when war broke out, but returned to Europe with the regiment soon after.
He got leave to get married in 1942 and the couple tied the knot at St Andrews Church, in Headington. After the war, Mr McKinley worked at Pressed Steel, in Cowley, and Jesus College.
The couple have one son, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Mr McKinley said talking things through is the secret of a happy marriage. "We have never had an argument. We don't agree on everything, but we always sit down and talk it through," he said.
"And it seems to have worked so far."
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