From this week’s Galway City Tribune – “Don’t have a row; don’t hold grudges – life’s too short.”

That’s the simple advice from a city couple who this month celebrated 63 years of marriage, as they reflect on a lifetime of family, hard work and happy times in their home on Shantalla Road.

Pat and Des Mannion tied the knot in St Joseph’s Church, Presentation Road, in September 1959, returning to the house they now call home for their wedding breakfast – a family celebration that set the trend for a lifetime of such gatherings at their welcoming abode.

When the Galway City Tribune visited last week, the smell of homemade pan scones wafted through the house, almost as welcoming as the couple themselves whose seven children and 23 grandchildren are the centre of their world.

“I don’t know how that fella stuck me,” laughs Pat, who recalls meeting Des when she was just 17.

Born in Moycullen, Pat and her family moved into Shantalla Road when she was a child – her parents having left the North of Ireland in the 1930s amid rising tensions there.

“You couldn’t believe it but they came down by horse and cart, from Omagh, stopping a couple of times on the road to rest the horses. They had a business and all up there, but they came here and settled. We never heard the whole story,” says Pat.

Des’s story, meanwhile, starts not far from their home at Cooke’s Corner – he was born in the Claddagh before moving to Bowling Green, or Slaughter Lane as they called it.

Recalling their early courtship, they share stories of Pat’s time working in the shop at the Savoy Cinema on Eglinton Street – joking that she “ate the profits”.

This is a shortened preview version of this article. To read the rest of Des and Pat’s story, see the September 16 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.