OXFORD’S own power couple – who both served as Lord Mayor and Sheriff of Oxford during their long political careers – celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary yesterday.

Bryan and Beryl Keen, both 83, moved to Oxford in March 1979 and together gave more than 40 years’ worth of service to the city as Labour Party councillors for Iffley and Cowley.

Yesterday marked 60 years since the grandparents tied the knot at Holy Trinity Church in their home city, Norwich. They then moved to Oxford two months before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister because Mr Keen had secured a job in the Labour Party as an election agent in the city.

Mr Keen said: “We married in Norwich in 1957 and we lived with Beryl’s mother for about three months.

“On Christmas Day a letter came from the council and we were given a flat. It was a good Christmas present."

He added: “We were both 10 at the same school (when we met) a lot of the time we were in the same class. We both left then at 15.”

Three years passed – but they met again at 18.

“We went off to Norwich speedway and that was our first date. Two years later, we were about 20 and got engaged,” he said.

The couple’s long association with the Labour Party begun in Norwich in 1971.

It came a year after a party agent invited the couple to a meeting on seeing they had Lego models of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and deputy leader of the party George Brown in their front window as he canvassed in the run-up to the 1970 general election.

Of their two children, Mandy, 56, still lives with them at their home in Liddell Road, Cowley.

Their son, Martin, lives in Bicester with his wife and two children, James and Emma.

The family will celebrate the couple's diamond wedding anniversary on Sunday, along with the Lord Mayor’s former chauffeur Roly Wearing and his wife, Wendy, at The Longwall restaurant in Cowley.

Mr Keen said the first person who canvassed the couple on their move to their new home was former Lord Mayor of Oxford and sheriff, Conservative Patsy Yardley, who became a firm friend.

“Ex-Lord Mayors and sheriffs stick together,” he said.

Mr Keen represented Iffley from 1989 until 2000 and Cowley from 2002 until 2012; Mrs Keen represented the same wards from 1986 until 2002 and from 2002 until 2006.

She served as Lord Mayor from 1996/7, deputy Mayor in 1998/9 and sheriff in 1999/2000. Her husband was sheriff in 2003/4, Lord Mayor in 2004/5 and deputy Lord Mayor in 2005/6.

It wasn’t until Andrew Smith won Oxford East for the first time in 1987 that Mr Keen tasted victory at a general election as an agent in the city.

Mr Keen had served as the election for Labour candidate Evan Luard in May 1979 in the old Oxford seat, when he was beaten by Conservative John Patten.

The Conservatives’ Steven Norris won Oxford East in 1983; but Andrew Smith won every other general election in the consistency until June, when he stood down and Anneliese Dodds held it for Labour.

The couple were presented with a certificate of merit from the Labour Party for their long service in December 2014. It was presented by their old friend, Mr Smith.