Platinum anniversary: Falkirk couple celebrate remarkable 70 years of marriage

Today (Thursday) marks seven decades since Robert Baird and Anne Anderson walked down the aisle to begin a lifelong commitment which would see them raise a family and open a business together.

As they celebrate their platinum wedding anniversary, they have now become one of Scotland’s longest married couples.

Robert, best known as Bobby, and Anne were a workplace romance having first met in R and A Main Ltd Gothic Works in Glasgow Road, Camelon, where he was a toolmaker and she a capstan lathe operator.

Bobby had grown up in the family home in Cromwell Road, Falkirk, at the rear of the former Graeme High School. HIs father Robert was a Falkirk businessman who had a shop in the town’s Grahams Road selling both gramophone records and bicycles, and mother Dinah looked after the home.

Anne lived with her parents, William, a miner, and mother Mary, in Langton Road, Westquarter.

The couple married on February 15, 1954 in the old Redding Church with the ceremony conducted by the Rev. Douglas Sommerville.

They set up home near Anne’s parents in Langton Road, Westquarter and it was here that their two sons were born, Robert and Derek.

Fifty years ago they moved to Laurieston where they continue to live to this day.

Anne, now 90, and Bobby, 92, both worked for Burroughs computers in Cumbernauld for a time and when the company closed, Bobby moved to Fairchilds which was on the site of the new Forth Valley College Falkirk campus. Ann took up a job as an auxiliary nurse at Falkirk & District Royal Infirmary.

Later they both opened a pet shop in Bo’ness which they ran for 20 years until their retirement.

The couple have two grandsons, Lewis and Struan, and daughters-in-law Caroline and Susan.