Sometimes you meet your soul mate early on and don't even know it. But Ron and Eileen Everest, who celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary recently, have proof: a photograph of them dressed up together as bride and groom taken in 1926 when they were both just 4 years old.

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"We have been in love from the age of zero," Mr Everest, now 91, told the Telegraph.

Their fathers had been friends before the kids were born, serving together in as chief petty officers during World War I. Born in the same maternity hospital in Gillingham, England, just seven months apart ("We might have even been born in the same bed," Mr. Everest quipped), Ron Everest and Eileen Campbell were best friends as tiny tots, playing together constantly.

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"Our parents decided to dress us as a bride and groom for the Gillingham Carnival," Mrs. Everest told their local newspaper, the Dereham Times. The little bride wore a long white dress and a bonnet with a veil, and carried flowers and her teddy bear. The groom looked dapper in a top hat, vest, and tails, too-big white gloves on his tiny hands.

"We were only 4 years old but I remember that day," Mrs. Everest said. "Our mothers were both good with a needle so they made the costumes and we walked all round Gillingham in them. But that was the last time I saw Ron."

The Campbell family moved to south London soon after that, and the Everests moved to Scotland. Ron joined the Royal Navy when he was 15. The kids fell out of touch, though the parents remained friends. When the families relocated again and ended up near each other in 1940, Ron and Eileen rekindled their friendship thanks to modern technology -- the telephone.

"Nobody had telephones in their homes in those days," Mrs. Everest remembered. "But when I was 18 I started work and there was a telephone and I really wanted to ring someone but didn't know anyone else to call. I asked my mother and she suggested her friend Gertrude, who ran a shop and post office. I rang her up and, of course, it was Ron's mother. She came over to visit me, without Ron at first, and then he came later."

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"I did not think much of Ron at all," she admitted to the Mirror. "But I did think he looked handsome in his Navy uniform. I liked the look of the uniform more than him!"

Ron was shy about chatting with his former playmate, but started writing to her and eventually asked her out.

"I still have that letter," Mrs. Everest told the Dereham Times.

"I thought she was really pretty. I suppose it was love at first sight," he told the Mirror. "I remembered her well from when we would play together as children. I enjoyed receiving her letters so I proposed."

They got engaged, but World War II kept them apart for two more years as Ron was sent to serve in the Far East and then on the Icelandic convoys to Russia.

"I would look at pictures to remind myself of Eileen," Mr. Everest told the Mirror. "We really missed each other."

He returned to England in June 1943; they were married five days later at St. John's Church in Welling. The bride wore a blue dress and bolero jacket, with a matching pillbox hat atop her dark curls and orchids pinned to her lapel. The groom looked dapper in his dark suit -- without a top hat this time.

Married life wasn't easy for the 21-year-old newlyweds. The couple had little money ("We borrowed money off Ron's mother to get a deposit together to buy our first house and paid her off 1 pound a week," Mrs. Everest told the Mirror), and Mrs. Everest hated working in a war factory, where she made radar equipment. Mr. Everest was still in the Navy and participated in the D-Day landings in June 1944. He retied from the Navy in 1961 and became an engineer.

But they were committed to making things work. They had a daughter, Carol, now 68, and in 1986 they moved to Beetley, Norfolk, to be near her and their grandson Maxwell, 38.

"As we went along we got on better and better," Mrs. Everest told the Mirror. "I think we will stay together forever. We've had our ups and downs, but have always got on."

"I do not think young couples nowadays try enough," she added. "After one argument they give up."

It's been 70 years, and the Everests are still happily married. Their secret?

"We promised to love, honour, and obey," Mr. Everest told the Dereham Times. "And I did all the obeying."

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