Over sixty years since they first met in the Devlin Hall, Charlie and Nellie McHugh were back at the venue where it all started for them.
It was Charlie who first noticed the young Nellie Price across the packed hall – he a native of Ballybofey and she from around the corner at nearby Ballymacool.
“I was 18 at the time and back then there were two dance halls that my friends and I would go to on a regular basis – the Butt and the Devlin.”
And it was on one of those nights at the Lower Main Street venue that he took a fancy to the woman who would become his wife.
His good friend, Charlie Bonner from Ballybofey, told Nellie she had an admirer and they immediately hit it off.
So was it love at first sight?. “Nearly,” laughs Charlie.
“We went out for two and a half years and then got married in 1965,” Nellie relates.
Married in St.Eunan’s Cathedral and now 59 years on back at a dance in the old Devlin Hall in the company of fellow patrons of the Letterkenny Reunion.
“Aye, I had to come all the way from Ballybofey to the Devlin to get myself a wife,” Charlie smiles.
Fortunately, Nellie wasn’t on board the night Charlie and his friends hired a car to travel to the Devlin Hall. On the return journey to Ballybofey, the vehicle broke down at the Bullock Park.
“We had to get out and push it all the way home. We arrived back at around six in the morning!.”
Meanwhile, he didn’t have to push himself too hard to talk to the young Letterkenny woman on that first night in the Devlin Hall!
The couple went on to have four children and eleven grandchildren.
Charlie was involved in the Singing Pubs competition during another famous event that once drew thousands to Letterkenny – the town’s International Folk Festival.
“That was a brilliant event, just like the Reunion has been when so many people came back from overseas over the years to meet up and have the craic and tell the stories.”
Adds Nellie: “It’s a pity it’s the last Reunion but so many people who came to it since it started have sadly passed on.”
Nellie herself had family from Scotland that would return to Letterkenny for the event.
“It was always lovely meeting up with people from the town.”
And after 59 years of married life, any complaints? “No”, says Charlie. “Well not too many anyway,” he laughs.
And with that the dancehall sweethearts make their way back into the hall where it began all those years ago….
