LAST Friday,  Bob Ingle, 72, and childhood sweetheart Robin  Keith, 70, tied the knot at a civil ceremony at Carey Bay nursing home,where  Robin’s mum, Nancy, aged in her 90s is a resident.

One of the reasons they decided to get hitched after all these years was to raise Nancy’s spirits.

 ‘‘We’ve known each other for 53 years,’’ Bob said. ‘‘But a lot of water has passed under the bridge.’’

Bob and Robin’s matrimony says a lot about the twists and turns life can take and the impacts it can have on people.

Bob joined the air force in 1958 and did his recruit training at Rathmines. Robin and her family lived at Balmoral, just over the hill.

 ‘‘They used to hold dances at The Barn  in Toronto just outside the RAAF base. "The local taxi driver Herby Reid would look at the boys he picked up at Awaba railway station, and if they were clean-looking and could dance  he invited them along,’’ Bob said.

‘‘One night,  I got to dance with Robin’s mum, Nancy.

  ‘‘I’d  had a few dance lessons and was well-versed in the standards like the  Gypsy Tap, Pride of Erin, the foxtrot etc.Nancy must have been impressed because she said, ‘You better meet my daughter’, and that’s how we first met.’’ 

The attraction was immediate, and lasting.  But it would be many years before they were to act on it.

In 1959, Bob was posted to Wagga, and then Ballarat and from there to Pearce, in Western Australia.

 He asked his mother to keep in touch with the sweet girl he had met and danced with at Rathmines.

 ‘‘My  mum was good to her word and kept in reasonable contact with Robin, so I had a bit of news about her,’’ Bob said.

But  life can get in the way of true romance.

Bob met and married a woman in 1962 in Western Australia.

When Robin found out, she decided  to move on and marry  – to another  RAAF man, as it turned out. For the next three decades, they lived   separate lives, raising families and getting on with life.

 Occasionally, because of  job postings, they would find themselves working and living in the same towns. 

And other times they would hear about each other on the grapevine from their parents.

 In 1999, after Bob was discharged from the RAAF, he and his wife of 33 years divorced. Bob bought a place in Mandurah, south of Perth, and settled into single life, devoting his energies to Lions and Jaycees.

‘‘Then one morning in 2004, the phone rang, and it was Robin,’’ Bob said. ‘‘She had a work-related thing and said she was coming over at Christmas, and so we met up again.’’

 It turned out Robin was divorced, too. 

A love that had been put on hold for many years was rekindled. They entered into a relationship that lasted 15 years before the topic of marriage arose.

‘‘We’d discussed getting married, but  Robin hadn’t felt happy while her ex was still alive, but when he died, about nine months ago, she was keen,’’ Bob said.

‘‘Nancy had often wondered if it ‘will it happen in my lifetime?’’’

The other important factor in the equation was Nancy’s health.

  Mum, as Bob refers to her, is in her 90s and they feared she was starting to flag. 

‘‘Nancy is very alert mentally but body is frail,’’ Bob said. ‘‘She can tell you every football and cricket game score, who’s playing and all that.  

‘‘But she had an episode before Christmas and I thought if we’re going to get married,  we  better do it quickly.’’

So Bob discussed it with  his family, and Robin’s two sisters, daughter and son, and there were no objections.

And everyone thought it would give Nancy a lift too. 

‘‘For someone who can’t move,  she nearly jumped out of her wheelchair,’’ Bob said. ‘‘She was happy as Larry.’’

As for ‘‘what ifs’’, Bob is philosophical.

‘‘If I’d stayed on the east coast,  we probably would have been together and had kids,’’ he says. ‘‘You just never know, we might have got sick of each other, too.’’