Maurice and Helen were married in 1934 and in their eight decades together have experienced great joy – and great suffering. They say their marriage has been perfect, though, so what’s their secret?

Helen Kaye has just celebrated her 101st birthday. She is talking about tablets. Not pills, but iPads. Her husband, Maurice, is 102 and only really wants to get behind the wheel of his car. Both, as you might gather, are rather unusual. Later this month, they celebrate their 80th wedding anniversary – one of the few couples in the UK to have reached this milestone.

Talking to the Kayes is like speaking to a couple perhaps 40 years younger. Maurice Kaye once had a flying lesson as a birthday present. That was in his younger days. He was merely 90 then.

If what they have could be bottled, they would make a fortune. Apart from the odd ache and pain, they are in good health, presiding over a family that loves them. They talk about their son, their daughter (and each of their spouses), their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with the pride of people who know how lucky they are. Although luck hasn’t always been with them.

The couple – who began their marathon relationship when they stood before a rabbi in a London synagogue in August 1934 – have suffered as much as they have celebrated. Two of their children died.

But they have also had a lot of fun along the way. The Kayes are keen bridge players, although their partners are all dead. “We don’t make plans now,” Helen says.

“Who knows how long we have got,” adds her husband. “It could be years, it could be weeks – it could be days.”

But years are what they have to look back on. It was love at first sight. “I suppose what I fell in love with,” says Helen, “was the fact that he had a car. Not many young men did in those days.”

She doesn’t wink when she says it, but Maurice takes it in good part. “I remember that car. It was a dark red Morris Oxford.”

Helen was 17 when she met Maurice, a travelling salesman for his father’s women’s wear firm. She worked in her mother’s shop in south London.

“He phoned me up for a date,” Helen recalls. “We used to go to a club in Brixton and we went to the Astoria for dancing. Joe Loss was conducting the band. A very nice man. We got to know him because we went there dancing so often.”

Maurice’s family lived in Hoxton, east London. Today it has been gentrified but in the 20s and 30s, he recalls, “It was rough – my schoolmaster used to let me leave early so that I wouldn’t be set upon.”

Helen was born in Warsaw and came to the UK aged six. “I learned English in about a year. We lived in the East End before going to south London – I remember how different it was from Poland.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maurice and Helen Kaye on their wedding day, 27 August 1934.

Two years after their marriage ceremony on 27 August 1934 at Borough synagogue, Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was on the rampage. “People said I looked like Mosley,” he says. “I had a little moustache and even wore a black shirt with a rolled collar – just because I liked it. I fought against him in the Battle of Cable Street.”

When war was declared in 1939, Maurice joined the army. He was a tough fellow in those days, and athletic – so he became a physical training instructor. It didn’t last. “I had a fight with a soldier who made antisemitic remarks. I punched him so hard they thought he was going to be blinded. I was court-martialled and sent off to Iceland to get me out of the way.”

Then just before D-Day in 1944, the Kayes’ south London home was bombed and Maurice was given compassionate leave. His comrades all went to Normandy. “My detachment disappeared – nobody knew what happened to them. Before long, I heard they had all been killed. I thanked God we had been bombed.”

After the war, the couple moved to Bournemouth. “We loved it immediately,” says Helen. They opened the first of what was to become a chain of five women’s wear shops. After 10 years of marriage they had a baby boy, Anthony, then another, Larry.

Anthony fell ill aged four and a half. “Doctors couldn’t find what was wrong,” said Helen. “They said he had measles but he died from a burst appendix. I was so broken-hearted, I tried to commit suicide. I tried to drown myself in the bath, but I couldn’t.”

Maurice shows me photographs of the children. There’s one of Anthony, with his knitted school tie draped around it. On another wall, is a portrait of Lesley, their daughter, who died in her 30s in 1991 of a brain tumour, leaving three small children. Without Anthony and Lesley, they have concentrated their lives around Larry, who was not quite two when his brother died, and their surviving daughter, Tina, who has also had a life-threatening illness in recent years.

The Kayes say they have had a perfect marriage despite the tragedies. They allow themselves the luxury of the occasional row, however. Until a few months ago, Helen used to be seen in the local supermarket, wheeling a trolley. “I find walking difficult now, so I let our housekeeper do it.”

“Yes, you tell her to buy too many things,” says Maurice.

“No, I don’t,” says Helen.

“Yes, you do. When it comes to meals, always too many potatoes, too many …”

“That’s not true,” she says.

Maurice has one regret. He would love to drive. His children persuaded him to stop after he turned 100. “I was a good driver,” he said. “I loved my Mercedes.”

“Yes,” says Helen, “but your reactions are not that good.”

“Of course, they are,” he says. “When were my reactions not good?”