The day that Cupid struck

They say you often find romance where you least expect it. Róisín Ingle asks four couples how they met and fell in love.

Some people have wonderful stories to tell about how they met, the kind they will be able to confidently relay to the grandchildren without fear of them dying of boredom. Natasha Richardson apparently knew she was going to fall in love with Liam Neeson when she first met him on the set of a film. Soon-to-be-married Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles first got that squidgy feeling at a polo match, while Bono and Ali Hewson are one of the few married couples around who can say they met in school. The rest of us might try to put a gloss on reality but increasingly the mundane truth is: "in the pub", "in college", "at a nightclub" or "at work". These days a few more quirky vagaries come into the mix. "At a speed-dating night." "Through an Internet dating website." Or, and this one's becoming increasingly popular, "in the downward-dog position at yoga class". Romantic or what? In honour of St Valentine, we asked four couples to cast their minds back to their first meeting and what it was that first caught their eye . . .

We were looking at a leaky roof

David (87) and Kitty Crowe (77) live in Margaret Place, Bath Avenue in Dublin, where Kitty grew up. They had their wedding party in the house when they got married in 1950. Dozens of friends and relatives danced and played music until all hours, with neighbours gathering outside calling for another tune. People spend too much money on weddings these days, they think now, when they could just clear the furniture back and make piles of sandwiches for the guests.

They met two years before at a céilí at the Shelbourne Hall in Lower Baggot Street. David had been away in England working and says he had been too busy to look for a girlfriend until then. "I used to work in the Swastika laundry," says Kitty. "I was out with my workmates and I saw this fella looking over at me. I kept putting my hand over my face because I wasn't sure about him. He asked me to dance and I thought he might be married."

She remembers the roof of the hall was leaking a bit and David telling her that he could fix it because he was a plasterer from a family of monument-makers and sculptors. "But he had an English accent and I didn't want him running down Irish plasterwork so I said he was talking rubbish," she remembers. He walked her home that night before making his way back to Harold's Cross.

The plaster was the glue that first stuck them together though. When Kitty's mother heard his name, it turned out she knew some of his relatives because her side of the family were also in the plastering trade.

David has been a pioneer for 70 years and Kitty doesn't drink either. "That was one of the things I liked about him. I always wanted a man that didn't drink and when my mother met Dave she said, you've got want you want there."

Sometimes Kitty would go to watch David, a keen athlete, train in the Phoenix Park and soon after they met, David bought a tandem bike. "People would see us cycling around town and they would shout, 'she's got her feet up on the handlebars, she's not doing any work at all'," says David.

What was it he liked about her? "Well if you look at a photograph of her at the time that kind of pushes you along," he smiles. "We got along together well, we had the same ideas."

They shared a love of music, too, and still attend monthly sessions together today.

There have been hard times, during which they raised seven children. David had to return to England for work in the 1950s, when there was no work in Ireland. "Kitty and I are both on the same track but we still go for each other's necks sometimes," he laughs. "The course of true love never ran smooth, that's a good saying."

Kitty, who received an award for her contribution to the local community, says the thing she likes most about David is "he would always give you a penny if you needed it for the children or the house. There were plenty of husbands who didn't," she says.

We saw each other on an ocean liner

Leslie (68) and Sean O'Sullivan (80) met on a passenger liner in 1959 when Leslie was emigrating from Calcutta to England and Sean was returning from an engineering job in Madras. She was 23 and travelling with her sister Sylvia. "He had lovely blue eyes which is what I noticed most," she says.

Leslie's father was Portuguese but was born and brought up in Goa, India, while her mother was half Indian and half English. An aunt had suggested that as life was difficult in India for women, she and her sister would be better off in England. She remembers meeting Sean over a game of deck quoits but the Cork man saw her take communion at Mass on the ship before that. "My first thought was, that is a very fine woman who looks like she would be very good at cooking and baking or digging spuds, so that is a start," he laughs. "I am no oil painting but she was very attractive, she is attractive still."

An invitation duly came to join Sean in the cocktail bar and during the three-week trip, the pair became part of a small group of friends but nothing romantic developed.

Sean kept in touch with most of the group and he corresponded with Leslie for the next three years. Then he invited her and her sister to visit him in Cork. "I had no idea that I was going to ask her to marry me," he says.

"But I suppose it was at the back of my mind somewhere." As they toured the lakes of Killarney the sisters were not sure which one of them he might have had his eye on. They found out while staying in the Parknasilla Hotel.

Out for an evening walk with Leslie, Sean found himself asking her to marry him. What he actually said was "would you like to be buried with my people?". "It's the Irish way," he says.

Leslie said she would think about it and they were married shortly afterwards in England. They had met each other only six times before the ceremony took place.

Sean likes to quote Shakespeare when talking about his wife. "Nature hath no beauty but the mind, none are so deformed as the unkind," he says. "I mean that she has the right kind of mind that I would be inclined toward, she has the values that I can relate to. I am not romantic. In our day you didn't go into all that hugging and squeezing and kissing in public," says the father of four. "His Irish eyes are always smiling," says Leslie. "He's a lovely, happy person."

We were dancing on an island

Tommy Joyce (18) and Jeannine Jud (18) met on Inis Mór off the coast of Galway when both were 16. A friend of Jeannine's had invited her to a disco at Kilronan and the Swiss-born teenager who has lived in Furbo, Galway, for six years thought it might be fun. "It was my first time on the island and I wanted to see what it was like," she says.

Tommy is an Inis Mór native. "I thought she was cute, lovely-looking with a good figure," he remembers. "We were dancing around each other for most of the night. I had a problem remembering her name and just called her Swiss Miss. I spent the whole night with my eye on her," he says. Jeannine remembers being impressed by Tommy the minute she met him. "There was instantly something I liked about him, he just had a charm and confidence. He made me feel I wasn't the outsider. I fancied him straight away," she says.

When the evening was over, Tommy, now a student in NUI Galway, decided he had better ask his Swiss Miss out in case he never saw her again. Her response was: "But when would I ever see you?" Tommy promised he would get the boat over to the mainland every Saturday which, for the next two years, he did.

They now live together in Galway, Jeannine taking a year out before going to college and Tommy studying Arts. "Although we are young it is quite a serious relationship and hopefully it will continue," says Tommy. "She is very caring, always speaks her mind and is always honest. I don't think she has ever told a lie in her life." Jeannine says Tommy is "incredibly generous and caring" and that he satisfies her romantic streak buying her flowers and getting her breakfast in the morning.

Not everyone agrees that they should be in such a serious relationship at their age. "Some friends think we are crazy. They say we are too young. But I just think, if I am happy why should I end things just for the sake of it?" says Jeannine. "I've always been a relationship person and I think he has, too."

We met because of the Pope's visit

Niall (47) and Mary McCarthy (45) met in 1980 in Limerick around a year after Pope John Paul's visit to Ireland. Growing up, their houses were five minutes apart, but they never met until they were both in their early 20s. The Pope brought them together. At least he's the reason Niall landed on Mary's mother's porch that day.

Both had been to Galway the previous year for the youth Mass, but their paths hadn't crossed then either. Mary was involved in the Girl Guides and Niall was active with the local Community Games. When the parish decided to have a youth day to celebrate the first anniversary of the Pope's visit, they were the obvious people to co-ordinate events, and Niall was dispatched to Mary's house.

"I went up and knocked on the door and she fell for me straight away," jokes Niall, a quality consultant. "Her manner and attitude was lovely. We were very easy-going together. I thought 'well I could definitely work with this person'." "I thought he was a nice-looking fella," says Mary, a legal secretary.

A few days after the meeting, Niall was involved in a six-car pile-up and needed a solicitor. He rang Mary for help and that's when the relationship really began. On St Stephen's Day, just over a year after they met, Niall proposed on the porch of Mary's mother's house. "A lot happened on that porch," laughs Niall.

"We have hardly been apart since," says Mary. The couple always wanted to travel and in the past 20 years have been to Australia, Africa, America and most countries in Europe, sometimes bringing their three daughters. They are very happy still, they say. "She is there for me anytime I need an ear," says Niall. "I married my best friend," says Mary.