It’s true what they say, love really does conquer all.

And Isabell and Ronnie Lewis, who celebrate 50 happy wedded years this Easter, know it more than most.

Ronnie was just 19 when he left the sunny Caribbean to find work in Bradford’s mills.

But a year later it was more than a job he had found – he’d found the love of his life too.

Even though Ronnie’s brother and Isabell’s step-dad played in the same steel band that used to practice in her kitchen cellar, the two families still frowned when the young pair announced they wanted to wed.

Ronnie said: “‘It’ll never work’ was a phrase we heard lots of. Heads would turn when we walked down the street together. It wasn’t really the done thing in those days to mix black and white.

“We were once thrown out of a pub’s best room at ten at night because they were expecting a coach party – well, that was the landlord’s excuse!”

But despite the odds, their romance blossomed.

Isabell, who was 16 at the time they were married, said: “We are both Catholics so we asked a priest to marry us – but we had some aggro from him. He insisted we both get copies of our birth and confirmation certificates first but Ronnie’s were still in Dominica so we got married at the register office instead.”

Six years later, when their eldest daughter Denise was about to get confirmed, the couple ‘married’ again, in church this time so they could go to the altar with her.

Only two of Ronnie’s family came to the first wedding but as the years went on “they thought I was the bees knees” said Isabell.

The couple went on to have a son Mark, who is living in New Zealand, and now have seven grandchildren and one great-grandson.

At 66 and 72 and a big family party planned for Easter Saturday, the couple, who once ran two Bradford pubs and now live at Flower Haven off Haworth Road – in their own words – “have it all”