A COUPLE who this week celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary said the secret to their longevity is teamwork.

Fred and Winnie Tipping, from Chadlington near Chipping Norton, joked they were “no longer head over heels in love”.

Yet they said they had reached the platinum milestone by remaining good friends and helping each other.

Lifelong Chadlington resident Mrs Tipping, 94, said: “Not many couples reach 70 years so it’s quite special.

“I don’t know how we’ve managed to stay together, I suppose it’s been about putting up with each other.

“I’m quite able-bodied but my husband has difficulty walking so I have to help him.”

Her husband, 94, raised in Chipping Norton, said: “I’m not head over heels in love like I was at one time but we’ve settled into an easy companionship.

“We’re good friends and we’re a team because we’re both in our 90s and look after each other. It’s a team effort.”

The couple were brought up on farms and met in their mid teens through Mr Tipping’s sister Lily.

Mrs Tipping, née Hobbs, was in the Land Army and he was in the Home Guard, while working on his grandparents’ farm in Chipping Norton.

They married on August 5, 1944 at Chipping Norton Methodist Church and moved to Lowlands Farm in West End, which has been in Mrs Tipping’s family since the 1920s.

Her dad Rowland Hobbs made her husband a partner in his farming business RJ Hobbs and Sons along with her brother Stanley, now 96 and a fellow villager.

They have lived on the farm ever since their wedding, initially in an old farmhouse before moving to a specially-built bungalow in 1973.

Mr Tipping worked on the farm until he was 80, with his wife also helping out during harvest.

The couple have two daughters, Alison Woodward, 66, and Janice Borondo, 62, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

They had hoped for a quiet celebration, but family and friends organised a garden party for about 40 guests at Mrs Borondo’s Chadlington home on Thursday.

Mrs Woodward, who travelled from her Australia home for the occasion, said: “I think 70th wedding anniversaries will get very much less frequent because people tend to get divorced if they don’t get on, but my parents have put up with each other.

“It’s great they are both still alive – we’ve got good genes.

“They argue, but they’re very good friends.”

The World this Week in 1944

Witney Gazette:

  • The couple on their wedding day
  • August 1 – Anne Frank makes her last diary entry. She is arrested in Amsterdam three days later by German secret police.
  • August 2 – Turkey breaks its diplomatic ties with Nazi-Germany.
  • August 7 – IBM’s first program-controlled calculator, the Harvard Mark I, is officially presented to Harvard University.
  • August 11 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Italy, as a major Allied campaign secures Rome and Florence.
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