Maureen Lipman engaged at 78 after proposing to her partner
Dame Maureen Lipman is engaged to be married after proposing to her partner at the age of 78.
The actress and comedian said she first asked David Turner for his hand on a train as a joke – and Mr Turner, also 78, said yes.
Dame Maureen said that “with a combined age of 156, we are going to get married”.
Writing in The Spectator, she said: “In truth I had been rather against the ‘M’ word, but on a train coming back from Edinburgh, he mentioned that it was the minor festival of Tu B’Av – a day when a Jewish woman can ask a man to marry her.
“Unable to resist the gag, I slid under the table separating us, onto one knee, and asked him for his hand. To my surprise and slight panic, he gave it.”
The actress, whose career has spanned Beattie in the BT advertising campaign and National Theatre roles, revealed she was in a relationship with Mr Turner last year. They made their first public appearance together at the Oldie of the Year awards last November.
She has previously spoken of the joy of finding love in her 70s after losing Jack Rosenthal, her husband of 30 years, to cancer in 2004. Guido Castro, a computer expert who had a form of Parkinson’s, was then her partner for 13 years before he died of Covid.
Announcing her engagement, Dame Maureen told how the couple shared the news with their loved ones on what would have been Rosenthal’s birthday.
She wrote: “My late, great husband Jack Rosenthal’s birthday would have been on Sep 8. So, armed with a birthday cake, we set off in David’s car to tell first my kids, then his, about our engagement. All reactions were warm, and all were individual. One child said that he needed time ‘to process’.”
Dame Maureen said two Metropolitan Police officers who had helped recover her stolen car on the same day were invited to the wedding.
She added: “The cops were impeccably patient, smiling and interesting. And, improbably, one of the officers, whose surname was Hussein, turned out to have a Jewish mother. They’re both coming to the wedding.”
In June last year, Dame Maureen wrote a column in the magazine with the headline My return to dating, in which she described going on a date on what would have been Castro’s birthday. She said her counterpart had not been on a date in 52 years.
