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When the man she’d shared her life with for more than a quarter of a century woke from a coma, Karen Taylor heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Gary Richmond had serious head injuries from an attack in the street and Karen had been told to say her goodbyes, warned that he might not make it through emergency surgery.

But her relief was tempered with sadness when Gary woke up with no recollection of their 26 years as a couple.

He couldn’t remember her name, let alone the daughter they had together.

“I could tell he recognised me but that was it,” says Karen. “I didn’t know if he would want to be with me still. It was quite traumatic.”

“Karen was a stranger to me,” explains Gary. “It was horrible and actually quite scary.”

Karen has used photos and mementoes as she tries to unlock Gary’s memory.

He still struggles, but three years after that night, Gary has fallen for her all over again and next year they’re finally getting married.

“Karen has been like my teacher,” he says. “I didn’t know anything about her and things had to be drummed into me. Last week I found out her favourite flowers are red roses so I bought her some.

"I’ve fallen in love with her again. It’s a beautiful feeling.”

Karen, also 46, says: “We’d always talked about marrying but after what we’ve been through it’s the perfect way to show how much we love each other.”

Karen met Gary in a nightclub in their home town of Bolton, Greater Manchester, in 1988.

“I dropped my straw, bent down to pick it up and when I came up he was there,” she remembers. “It was love at first sight.”

Six weeks later they moved in together. “It was a bit of a whirlwind,” says Karen, who has a son, Derek, 29, from an earlier relationship. “We decided within weeks to get married and even booked the church. But the cost of the whole thing made us change our minds.”

Five years later, daughter Chelsey, now 22, was born. Then in 2007 Karen had a traumatic miscarriage. “I was lost in grief and we grew apart and stopped talking to each other,” she says.

“I needed some space and Gary went to stay with a friend. But I missed him like crazy and six months later we were back together.”

In June 2010 Karen got a call in the early hours to say Gary had been badly beaten up.

“It was the night of a World Cup match,” she recalls. “Gary had been trying to calm down a crowd of youths and they turned on him. When I got to the hospital, he’d had a seizure.”

Gary was transferred to a specialist unit for emergency surgery. “We were told to say goodbye,” she says.

Though he pulled through, Gary faced a long road to recovery. After three months of rehabilitation he came home and Karen put her master’s degree in social work on hold to care for him.

After the attack, police made arrests but the men were freed and his attackers have not been found.

Gary now has epileptic seizures and during one he broke both shoulders. It left him unable to feed or dress himself.

“But the memory loss is the worst thing,” says Karen. “He couldn’t remember our daughter’s birth or her childhood.

"It’s so upsetting because Gary was there at the birth and he was a wonderful hands-on dad. We had shared so much together but he didn’t really know me. Even physically, it was like sleeping with a stranger.”

Gary, who has a son Lewis and daughter Amy, both 25, from previous relationships, cannot go back to work as a painter and decorator any time soon but Karen has now returned to her job as liaison officer at Preston Hospital.

The couple hope to wed next January in Greece. “That was the month we met,” explains Karen. “And we’ve had our best holidays there.”

“I’m just so very proud that Karen has agreed to marry me,” says Gary. “We’ve been through a lot together and I’m a lucky man.”