This archive report was first published on 7 January 2020.
Jan and Rob Shakespeare's love story is one for the ages. The couple, who first met in 1974 at a Woolworths store in Erdington, Birmingham, have just remarried 17 years after their first marriage ended in a painful divorce.
Rob, now 61, and Jan, also 61, were just 16 when they first met. Jan worked in the office, and Rob was in the stockroom. Within a year, they were dating, and their love continued to grow.
They moved in together at 17 and got married a year later in 1976. Jan was five-and-a-half months pregnant at the time, and their daughter Cara was born on Christmas Day. The couple went on to have two more children, Lee and Adam.
However, 23 years into their marriage, cracks started to show. Jan was made redundant from her job in Boots and started working shifts at another company. She and Rob barely saw each other, and they eventually separated in 1999. Rob filed for a divorce, which came through in 2000.
Both Rob and Jan moved on with their lives, but they never forgot about each other. They would occasionally cross paths, but they didn't speak for years. That all changed in 2013 when their daughter Cara told her mum that Rob's wife had died of ovarian cancer. The tragedy brought them back together, and they started seeing each other again.
Rob proposed to Jan for a second time on Christmas Eve, 2015, and they married in 2017 at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Coleshill, Warwickshire. The ceremony was a beautiful affair, with gospel singers and a first dance to Ed Sheeran's 'Perfect'.
Jan says, 'It had always been my dream to walk down the aisle so we decided to do it this time. We had gospel singers too. We've still got our wedding bands from our first marriage but we decided to get new ones this time round, to mark a fresh start.'
Rob adds, 'When I saw Jan at the end of the aisle in her white dress, I cried. We decided to have our first dance to Ed Sheeran's 'Perfect' as it seemed to fit the situation. We even had dance lessons for it.'
Both Rob and Jan say their relationship is stronger than ever. 'We appreciate each other so much more now than we ever did,' says Rob. 'We are the same people, but also we've changed a lot and I think now we can step back and realise what we've got in each other.'
