An Earby couple are living proof you are never too old to find love on the internet.

George and Sheila Fletcher-Baker met through a magazine dating website four years ago and e-mailed each other for a year before progressing to the telephone.

And when they did finally meet – at a restaurant in Gisburn – they both turned up an hour early, to make sure they matched their photographs.

Now, almost two years after getting married at All Saints Church, Earby, in front of delighted family and friends, 82-year-old George and Sheila, 76, are still very much in love.

“People think when you get older, you can’t love someone and its about companionship, but I think you can love someone more as you get older,” said George.

And Sheila added: “We’re always holding hands, people are always commenting on it and saying ‘get a room’.”

George and Sheila both start getting Friends Magazine and access to its dating site following the deaths of their long-term partners in 2007. George had unsuccessfully been in touch with a couple of women and had cancelled his subscription, but had decided to give it one last go.

“I call Sheila my ‘pound wife’, because I’d given up and then decided to take up another subscription for a £1,” he said.

George, a former RAF man originally from Kent and living in Blackpool, and Sheila, settled in Earby, whose late husband and two sons were all in the army, quickly found they had many shared interests.

They had a computer date every night at 9pm – after Sheila had finished watching the soaps on the television.

George said: “We’d talk until about midnight, a lot of it was idle waffle, but everything I said, Sheila would have something to say about it. I’d met Prince Charles, but she’d actually met the Queen and talked to her. We had so much in common.”

After e-mailing each other for a year, George asked for Sheila’s telephone number.

Eventually, they agreed to meet in person – at Strawberry Fields Restaurant in Gisburn – and both turned up an hour early – to check each other out.

“I wanted to have a look at him first, to make sure, and you do hear stories,” said Sheila.

“I walked over and kissed her on the forehead, I think we’d fallen in love long before we’d met,” said George.

For a while, George would drive the one-and-a-half-hour journey from his home in Blackpool to Earby and spend the day before returning late at night.

“My daughter said to me one day, ‘why are you sending him home every night?’ I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Sheila.

George eventually moved in and soon after they married on September 26, 2009, at All Saints Church, Earby.

Now, the couple are popular members of the community and at the church, where George renovated a 40-year-old model of the church, found in the cellar.

And for them, they are delighted that a shared interest in computers and a willingness to look for new friends, has ended up with them finding each other.