A GWENT couple will celebrate Valentine's Day as newly-weds today - even though they are both in their 70s.

Rowan Griffiths and Myra Percival, from Varteg, got married at Pontypool Civic Centre on Saturday eight months after meeting one another at a luncheon club.

As they tied the knot surrounded by close family and friends, the couple said “you are never too old to find love”.

Rowan, 73, and Myra, who is also in her 70s, were both married to their first spouses for more than 50 years before their respective partners died in 2009 and 2008.

In July last year Rowan, who married his first wife Marian in 1958, began attending the Tuesday luncheon club at Garndiffaith's Millennium Hall where he met Myra for the first time.

They began spending time together, and after three months Rowan proposed at his Varteg home.

Asked what had attracted them to one another, Rowan said it was their differences that had made the relationship strong.

He said: "Myra's a Christian and I'm a buddhist, but we just do a lot of laughing together."

Myra, who married her first husband Alan in 1949, said: "I never thought I would find somebody again, especially as we both had very happy marriages, so it came as quite a surprise to both of us. But he's a good man and he will look after me."

The couple had a Buddhist blessing ceremony near Raglan on Friday, followed by a more traditional ceremony in Pontypool at the weekend, where Myra was given away by her daughter Lana Tingway.

Around 40 guests celebrated at their reception at The Hanbury pub and restaurant, including Myra's daughter Lana, Rowan's daughter Gina Baccioni, and three of their four grandchildren.

The couple will honeymoon in Lisbon for nine days in May.

Rowan said: "We have more than a hundred years experience of marriage between us, and it's never too late to find love."