After 78 years and 190 days of happy marriage, Omagh-born Michael Brady (98) and his wife Catherine Brady (104), were confirmed by staff at the Guinness Book of Records yesterday as Britain's longest-married couple.
And how did they celebrate this honour? "We had a drop of sherry, but I put some water in my wife's sherry," Mr Brady told The Irish Times.
Mr Brady and his wife, who was born in Manchester, now live in a nursing home in Middlesbrough. They were married on July 29th, 1920, at St Edmund's Roman Catholic Church in Manchester, after meeting at a dance in the city's town hall.
On the day before they were married, the British prime Minister, David Lloyd George, urged the Americans to join the embryonic League of Nations, while in London police cars were being introduced to replace horses.
Their marriage was so happy and long "because we been good to each other", Mr Brady said. "My ambition, just like my father's, was to get the family settled and into jobs. We've always known we were the longest-married but we didn't like to say anything about it."
Mrs Brady's grandfather came from Killarney, Co Kerry, but the Bradys have been back to Ireland only a handful of times since they were married. Mr Brady left Omagh when he was aged six after his father moved to Manchester to work at a steel plant in 1907, but he remembers the town well: "I remember the nice, cool water of a river near Omagh where we used to bathe in the summer. But there were no cars in Omagh then and I didn't get my first car until after the first World War. It was a Ford.
"The town was divided, but nothing like today, and Roman Catholics couldn't get a job. There were some boys who would beat us up if we didn't curse the Pope." The couple's daughter, Mrs Molly Highfield, who at 65 is the second-youngest of their six children, said the secret of her parents' successful marriage was quite simple. "It was because they always put their family first and they put their faith in Almighty God."
Mrs Highfield encouraged her son-in-law to contact the Guinness Book of Records after reading about other couples who had long marriages. She said: "We'd hear about these couples with record-breaking marriages and say `Mum and Dad have been married longer than that'."
Their names were sent to the publisher's office in London, with copies of the Bradys' birth and marriage certificates. After two independent witnesses supported their claim to the record, their names went into the book.