This Valentine's Day we're taking a trip down memory lane as we share some of your own love stories of how you met your partner through the RAF, and how the love is still going strong today.
Ellen and Bob
Bob and I met at RAF Hereford, the day we arrived for trade training in Spring, 1972. He arrived from Swinderby for the Supplier Accounting Course and I from Spitalgate for the Clerk Secretarial course. Luckily the courses started and finished on the same day. By chance, we were a bit older than most of the others there, so we quickly struck up a friendship. At the end of the course, he was posted to Scampton and I to Coltishall.
Over the next few months, we saw each other at weekends when we could and soon became engaged. We married just before Christmas that year and 52 years on, we have two children and four grandchildren and are still happily together and enjoying retirement. Since retirement, I have really enjoyed rekindling my RAF camaraderie with the RAF Association WRAF Branch.
Ellen and Bob at the Eden Project with the RAF 100 baton in 2018.
Careena and Craig
20 years ago, Craig and I were both JRs serving at RAF Leuchars. In true military fashion, we met whilst a little tipsy in a Dundee nightclub, and I don’t remember meeting Craig! A week later in a St. Andrews pub, I introduced myself to Craig, for him to already know who I was.
After a quick romance and a four month visit to the Falklands for Craig, we were married. We married in Central Park, New York, in January 2007. It was a winter wedding in front of 20 family and friends.
Craig left the RAF after seven years of service and I am still in over 21 years served. We have been posted all over the UK and did three years in America. Our daughter India was born in November 2011 and is now a thriving teen at Queen Victoria (MOD) Boarding School. We are at RAF Lossiemouth, with our dog and two cats.
Careena and Craig with their daughter India (left), and on their wedding day (above).
Joy and Ric
“Joy, my sweetheart, I do miss you more than I can say and I’m longing to be with you again. You know that don’t you?” These were the words of Ric Wilkinson to his new bride Joy, recorded in October 1945 but unheard for decades.
Click here to read the full story of how the RAF Association reunited Joy with Ric’s voice from a fragile Voices of the Forces message.
Joy holding the record for the first time in decades, after hearing Ric’s voice once again.
