In 1992, Lee was living with his parents in Cardiff. One night, at the end of February, he went to the pub with his guide dog. “I was born with virtually no sight due to a rare genetic condition,” he says. “I got my first guide dog, Toby, in 1989, and we would go to one of the locals regularly. I enjoyed chatting to people and often bumped into friends.”
Sitting at the bar, he felt his elbow being knocked and heard a woman apologise. “I was a student and at the pub for a quiz with friends,” Gayle says. “After I accidentally knocked Lee and said sorry, I noticed his guide dog.” Toby was out of his harness and not working at the time, so she asked if she could “make a fuss of him”. “Lee and I had some general chit-chat while I was waiting for my drinks and then I went back to my table,” she says.
Later, as Lee was about to leave, some friends spotted him and called him over. While he began to make his way across the room, Toby, who was still off his harness, went straight to Gayle. “I said: ‘Come on, Toby!’ But he just stayed there. Then I heard a voice say: ‘I’m sorry, it’s me again. Your dog has put his head on my lap.’ He could have gone up to anyone but he picked Gayle.”
Rather than join his friends, Lee pulled up a seat next to Gayle and they chatted for the rest of the evening, bonding over their love of dogs. “At the end of the night, he invited me for a cup of tea and then he walked me home. I thought he was good-looking and a great conversationalist,” she says.
They met for a drink the following Saturday, and Lee invited her over to listen to records the next week. Lee says they just clicked as a couple and by the end of the year, they had moved in together.
“Some people questioned the relationship at first because of Lee’s condition,” says Gayle. “But I pointed out that any healthy person can end up becoming ill or disabled. They asked if my children would be disabled too. The condition is very rare, so I said it was unlikely, but you can never be sure what will happen in any situation, so it didn’t matter to me.”
The couple married in April 1993 in Cardiff. Twelve guests had their own guide dogs with them. “Sadly, Toby was retired due to seizures not long after we met, but he came to our wedding with my new guide dog, York,” says Lee. “The BBC somehow got hold of the fact that there would be two guide dogs at the altar and wanted to cover the story. We had camera people at the wedding and it was all over the local news.”
The couple have two daughters, born in 1997 and 2000. Gayle was a lab technician until the late 90s, before joining the Prison Service. She now works in retail. Lee also worked for the Prison Service and later joined a bank before retiring in 2006.
They still live in Cardiff with Reggie, Lee’s current guide dog. “My running joke is that I married him for the dog and he’s changed it five times,” she says. “But really I love Lee because he accepts me for who I am and we just fit. He makes me laugh and we are very in sync. I’ll be thinking of a question and he’ll answer it before I’ve even said it.”
Lee admits that his vision impairment makes life challenging at times, but Gayle is always there to support him. “There are things I enjoy doing that I can’t do on my own because we drive to get there. One of my biggest hobbies is recording birdsong, so we go to different nature reserves around Cardiff,” he says. “I am not always the easiest person to live with. But we’ve had a lovely life together and we can’t ask for more than that. I can’t imagine life without her.”
