Michael and Anne Power have marked 60 years of marriage this year.

The couple celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on Thursday, April 13. They were married on Saturday, April 13, 1963.

The couple knew just a year after meeting that they wanted to stay together for life. Sixty years later, nobody can say they made the wrong choice.

The couple met when Anne was working at The Corner Café on Endless Street and courted through the bitter winter of 1963 when Salisbury received 6-7 feet of snow for more than three months.

Anne had moved to Salisbury from Vienna, Austria at the age of 12 with her British mother.

She said: “[My mother] was a British citizen, so she brought me over.

“She met a soldier, they got married. I stayed with my grandparents back in Vienna until she came back home to fetch me and I’ve been here ever since.”

Both Michael and Anne went to St Osmond’s School and were married in St Osmond’s Church and soon moved into their newly built home in Gainsborough Close, where they raised their two daughters, Tracey, now 59, and Sandra, now 58. Within the following decades, Michael and Anne became grandparents to Tracey's daughter Kelly, 37, and Sandra's sons Adam, 36, and Joe, 30, and great-grandparents to Adam's children, four-year-old Zack and three-year-old Taylor.

Michael and Anne still live in the same house to this day and can point to the area in the living room where they used to host family talent shows, during one of which Michael got himself literally tied up trying to perform an escape trick that he had practiced numerous times.

Michael said: “We were the first people here, total. There was nobody living here, these were all new houses, and we were the first ones to come in.

“The kids grew up here and it’s been a happy house all the years; never had any trouble at all.

“We’ve just been so happy here that it never entered our minds to move. We wouldn’t have found a house that’s been so happy, anyway.”

Many people from Salisbury may remember Anne Power as the cook at Leaden Hall School, where she worked for 21 years.

Michael said: “She’s always been a good cook. I’ve never, ever refused anything that [she] put on a plate.”

Michael first worked for the Salisbury District Council before being hired at Wessex Water, where he worked for 34 years.

So, what’s the secret to a six-decades-long happy marriage?

Michael said: “Never take an argument to bed. We always tell each other every single night that we love each other.

“That’s the way that you stay together, is you tell each other that you love each other and never take an argument to bed.”