East Yorkshire couple reach diamond wedding anniversary and reveal secret to happy marriage
A couple from East Yorkshire have said the secret to a happy marriage is having a good sense of humour after reaching their diamond wedding anniversary.
John Barry Bellenie, 83, known to many people as "Barry", and Margaret, 82, now live in a house John built from the ground up in Hessle but first met at Hull City Hall in 1958. John recalled: "We were courting and I was an apprentice at the time, I'd only just started at Ideal Standard."
"My wife was working at the distillers in Paragon Street as a Hollerith operator." The Hollerith was a type of early computer invented in 1951 that processed data using punched cards.
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After John finished his apprenticeship, he became a sales representative for a Doncaster-based business but said he was not given a company car because of a "very bad speech impediment". He said: "I didn't receive a car until I became the top salesman in the company, walking around as well. I was walking on average about 30 miles a day with oil samples."
John and Margaret married on August 29, 1964, at a church in Hessle and had two children: Jamaine, 58, and Jonathan, 55. John said: "We are very happy together.
"I've turned around to Margaret a bit like the guy who walks through the smoke on television, 'Tonight Margaret I'm going to be an estate agent, or tonight Margaret I'm going to be a wholesaler for electrical calibration equipment and I'm going to travel the world again.'" John said the secret to a happy marriage is to "have a sense of humour".
He also said their numerous trips around the world together were "interesting" and made them much more well-travelled than the average couple. "I specialise in 'difficult' and 'dangerous' countries," he said.
After four years working as a representative for an American oil company, John became a finance broker and then an estate agent. But in 1971 John then went into electronics with his company Test and Measurement Instruments (TMI).
He had a small factory in Scunthorpe making calibration equipment used in the oil industry. He was also the director of a cyberprotection company in Hull and director of a property company in Hull. Now very busy, John said he spent a lot of time in South East Asia including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia.
He also worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other places that produced oil. In the 1990s John became a consultant for British companies that wanted to trade in South East Asia. "I was able, on some occasions, to take my wife with me," John said.
"We went to most of the countries in South East Asia and went to Australia and New Zealand. I was travelling out of the UK every two weeks. My wife was able to come with me everywhere you can think of, including Israel.
He added: "I've met almost every important figure in Asia and I have also spent 45 minutes with Prince Charles, who is now the King, on services to international business. That was in Scunthorpe and that was interesting."
John said Prince Charles "had a sense of humour" and recalled they "had a laugh". He added: "The funniest thing about that was we had all of the police there - obviously because he was Prince of England - and they were all outside.
"Scunthorpe Council provided refreshments and sandwiches with the crusts cut off but hardly anything was touched. There was enough food on the table to feed about 50 people and after he'd [Prince Charles] gone the police came in and took their helmets off and filled up on the cakes and things. I thought that was really funny."