'We're just one person really': Maple Ridge, B.C. couple celebrates 70th anniversary

Bill Brennan still can't believe Violet Lacey agreed to go see an Abbott and Costello film with him back in 1943.

"I remember standing outside the cinema and seeing you walk across the road and I thought, 'She's going out with me?' " said Bill Brennan, 90, recalling their first date. 

The couple reminisced about the early days of their romance in a recent interview with CBC.

"Seventy years later and you're still telling me off," Brennan added.

The couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary July 12. Bill and Vi, as their family calls them, now live with their daughter and her husband in Maple Ridge, B.C.

Before moving to Canada in 1982 to be near their daughter, they lived and worked in the United Kingdom.

The couple met during the Second World War in Britain, in 1943.

"Bill was in the drawing officers of the Ordnance Survey," recalled Violet Brennan. "And I was in the canteen. We used to take biscuits and cakes around at lunch time. I met him then."

"Vi came to the counter," added Bill. "And that was the first time I saw her and I just thought, 'Wow.' "

The Ordnance Survey is a U.K. national mapping agency that performed operations during the Second World War. Bill was being trained as a topographical draughtsman by the survey when he met Violet.

In 1945 he was drafted into the army, where his job was to analyze image-based intelligence of Germany and the Soviet Union.

"I didn't get down on my knees," said Bill Brennan when asked about his marriage proposal. "I just said 'shall we get married at Christmas?' and that was it." 

"And then of course the commander told me I couldn't get married at Christmas, so we settled for July." 

On July 12, 1947, Bill and Violet were married at St. James Church in Southampton, England. And Violet Lacey became Violet Brennan.

Seven decades later

"We very rarely go out any distance without each other," she said. "We're just one person really."

Violet Brennan suffered a stroke recently and lost parts of her memory. She finds support in her husband and their daughter. Each Wednesday she goes to Ridge Meadows Hospital in Maple Ridge to participate in their day program.

"It's still not good. But it's not too bad," she said. "I can manage." 

Listen to the full interview with Bill and Violet:

Despite her memory loss Violet Brennan remembers the love she and her husband shared.

"Vi will say to me, 'Do you still love me?' and I say yes. It's a straight line," said Bill. "It's a straight line all the way through." 

With files from On The Coast and Vivian Luk