A COUPLE living in Newton Abbot celebrate their platinum wedding anniversary this week.

Armando and Patty Peralta received their card signed by His Majesty King Charles III ahead of their 70th anniversary on Wednesday, July 9.

Armando Peralta was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1934.

His early life was marked by the instability and uncertainty of wartime, and in 1948 his family decided to seek a new beginning in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

Patty Dowling, born in Bristol, England, in 1936 had her own path to Africa.

Her family emigrated to Northern Rhodesia in the hope that the warmer climate would ease her sister’s chronic asthma.

Different continents, different childhoods - yet the same destination.

By what can only be described as destiny, both found themselves enrolled at the same school in the copper-mining town of Chingola.

Their first meeting was almost cinematic.

At a party hosted by a mutual friend, Patty beckoned a tame fawn over for a kiss. Armando, misreading the moment in the most charming way possible, leaned in and kissed her instead.

That innocent, bold act marked the beginning of a courtship that would become one of the greatest love stories in their family’s history.

Days later, Patty invited Armando over for a game of Monopoly on March 2, 1951.

‘That was it,’ Patty says with a laugh.

‘I just knew that he was the continental man of my dreams,’ she added.

Armando too had always imagined marrying a British girl.

Armando worked as a pipe fitter at the copper mines - often 20 hr shifts in order to save enough for a honeymoon cruise or a lifetime - touring the world.

The couple married on July 9, 1955 and have never looked back.

But the adventure was cut short when they discovered Patty was pregnant.

Within five years, they had four children.

Eventually, they would raise six: three boys and three girls.

In search of opportunity, Armando moved the family to South Africa, where he launched a successful construction business and estate agency.

Patty, meanwhile, was the glue of the home managing six young children, meals, school runs, and all the quiet details of daily life and forgetting the endless laundry!

Today, that family has grown to include 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

At the turn of century, Armando and Patty moved to England to retire, settling in Newton Abbot.

The distance away from their family was difficult, but they embraced the change together, just as they had everything else in their journey.

‘We have had our ups and downs, like any couple,’ says Patty.

‘But you stick together. You choose each other, every day,’ Patty added.

Armando agrees, though not without a cheeky smile.

‘I make all the major decisions,’ he jokes, ‘and Patty makes all the minor ones.

‘So far… there haven’t been any major decisions,’ Armando said.

And when asked the secret to their long and happy marriage, the reason couldn't not be more clear.

‘Christianity is the foundation,’ the couple say.

‘Everything else flows from that - respect, forgiveness, laughter, and love’, the couple said.

Armando, 90, and Patty, 88, will mark the occasion will a celebratory dinner, surrounded by their family flying in from South Africa.

The Mid-Devon Advertiser would like to wish Armando, Patty and the rest of the family the very best.