A COUPLE who met as babies more than 30 years ago are set to tie the knot.
Laura Nice, 31, of Epsom, Surrey, was just weeks old when she first set eyes on Andy Ducrow, 33, and the pair recently welcomed a child of their own.
They met thanks to their dads, Gary Nice and Dave Ducrow, both 60, who became friends when they met as schoolboys in Birmingham, West Midlands, in 1963.
Pattern designer Laura and lorry driver Andy lost touch in their late teens, but reconnected in their twenties and fell in love.
Laura said: “It’s a real generational love story. I can’t remember a time when Andy wasn’t in my life, while our dads fight over our son, Chase, like they might have scrapped in the playground when they met 55 years ago.”
Gary moved to Cambridge with his parents a few years after meeting Dave, but they stayed in touch and, over the years, became best mates.
After Gary married Laura’s mum Jane, now 57, in summer 1984, and Dave married Andy’s mum Jackie, they often hung out together as couples.
Still best friends, the granddads now cannot wait to become official father-in-laws when Laura and Andy tie-the-knot.
Hopefully, their forthcoming nuptials will be more straightforward than they were for Laura’s parents.
She explained: “They were going to marry in June 1984, but Andy’s mum would have been heavily pregnant with him by then.
“Dave was my dad’s best man, so they moved the wedding in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, forward, to ensure they could safely attend.”
Luckily, Andy stayed happily in his mum’s tummy for long enough not to upstage the bride.
Instead, he arrived safe and sound at hospital in Birmingham at the end of June, 1984 – meaning he was nearly two when Laura was born at Hinchinbrook Hospital in August 1986.
“I think I was a matter of weeks old when I met him for the first time,” Laura said.
“Of course, I can’t remember. I do know when I was christened in Ashbourne at just a few weeks old, he attended.”
The pair then spent every summer holiday and Christmas together throughout their childhood.
“I was living in Cambridge and Andy was in Birmingham, so we would go to each other’s homes,” explained Laura.
“I can remember us spending endless Christmases together. It was brilliant.”
But as they got older and started secondary school, they drifted apart – although their parents were still best friends.
“Andy left school at 16 to become a lorry driver, while I stayed on, doing my A-levels,” said Laura, who heard through her parents that Andy, by then in his late teens, had married.
“Aged 18, I travelled around Greece and lost touch with him, except on social media,” she explained.
Then, when she was around 22 and he was 24, she received a message from him on Facebook.
“He just said hello,” she said. “Then the messages flew back and forth. We had a lot to catch up on.”
Still living in Birmingham, Andy – who broke up with his wife after a few months, long before he reunited with Laura – offered to drop in on her in Cambridge, en route to London.
After catching up on childhood memories, they realised their friendship had blossomed into something more.
Visiting each other more regularly over the coming months, they fell in love.
Laura recalled: “One day, I got a call from my dad. He said, ‘Where are you?’ Flummoxed, I told him I was with Andy.
“I had to confess we were an item and he was over-the-moon. He’d always treated Andy like a son.”
Immediately, her dad invited his daughter’s new boyfriend over for Sunday dinner.
“Andy was so nervous,” laughed Laura, who is currently on maternity leave.
“Even though he’d met Dad hundreds of times, he suddenly became all shy.”
Last December the couple moved in together in Epsom, and in November 2015, Andy proposed.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Laura. “To think that those little boys, who met at school in 1963, led to us getting together all those years later.”
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And, four months ago on October 17, 2017, at Epsom General Hospital, Chase was born weighing 8lb 6oz.
“Now it’s come full circle,” said Laura. “We’re set to get married next year. Our dads are delighted!”
The couple used a National Rail railcard to get a third off their trains between Cambridge and Birmingham. For more information about Railcard or to read more rail related love stories visit railcard.co.uk/lovestories.
Earlier this month we told how childhood sweethearts finally tied the knot… 72 years after he dumped her.
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