88-year-old Woman Wants to Marry 40 Year Old Man She Met (Photos)

An 88 year-old-woman is to marry the homeless man she first found rummaging through the bins of a fish and chip shop more than 40 years ago in a real-life Lady And The Tramp tale.

Joan Neininger felt so sorry for down-and-out Ken Selway that she made sandwiches for him, wrapped them up, and dropped them in the bin for him to find.  

Love blossomed from that unlikely start and Joan eventually left her husband, Norman, to live in a caravan with Ken, who suffered from schizophrenia.

But their unusual relationship was never sexual and eventually all three - Norman, Joan and Ken - lived together happily for many years.

Now widow Joan and Ken, 89, are residents of a care home in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, and will marry in the town's Register office on her birthday in mid-February.

'When I saw him ferreting through the bins outside a fish and chip shop near my bookshop in Gloucester, I never thought for a minute it would end like this,' said Joan, who proposed during the 2016 Leap Year.

'But although he was living on the streets, I knew straight away that Ken was lovely man with a beautiful soul.'

Joan was a married mother in the spring of 1975 when she first noticed Ken was different to the other homeless people living rough near Toby's bookshop in the shadows of Gloucester Cathedral.

He was neatly dressed in a grey belted gabardine mac and drank only milk.

After reading Down and Out in Britain, by Jeremy Sandford, she realised Ken could be one of the many ordinary people slipping through the welfare state safety net.

'The man haunted me like a spectre and, It was dreadful to see him slowly deteriorate,' she said in a book she later wrote about their relationship. 'The first time I saw him searching for food in a rubbish bin, I silently broke my heart.'

She asked advice from the local church minister and her family and it was her daughter who suggested leaving sandwiches in the bin because he would not take any money. 

The binmen took the first package but Joan made more and eventually, with the blessing of her husband Norman, she invited Ken in for a meal.

For a long time he refused all offers of help and money, telling her: 'You'll get into trouble'. 

But her father finally convinced Ken it was the whole family who were concerned about his welfare.

Ken told them he had been born in London and had been evacuated to Wales where he became a Bevin Boy. 

When the Welshman he regarded as a father died, he returned home but his mother could not cope with his mental health problems and told him to go.

After being made homeless Ken slept in railway stations and shop doorways until he went to Gloucester looking for relatives of his evacuee father and found a derelict house to sleep in at night.

His only belongings were a set of clean clothes, a radio, a fossil he once mined and a few personal pieces that he kept in a hidey hole behind a brick in a wall. He frequently considered suicide but Joan spotted an 'innate dignity and a measured way of speaking' that made her realise he was from an educated family.

Over the next few years Ken came in and out of the family's life but caring for Ken took a toll on Joan's 30-year marriage and when husband Norman gave her an ultimatum she bought a caravan in Twigworth, near Gloucester, and moved in. Later, Ken came to stay too.

At first they were happy but Ken's mental health problems made him unpredictable and he could fly off the handle if she said the wrong thing or make unjust accusations. 

He could not manage day to day living and it had an impact on Joan's health.

'People with schizophrenia are imprisoned by the voices,' said Joan, who went on to become a mental health campaigner.

'Ken believed everything these voices were telling him so it was very difficult to have a relationship. I did not know anything about it but I soon learned.'

After several years of make-ups and break-ups Joan said Ken had to choose between her and medical help and the medication made him so much better he was able to build bridges with his mother who explained she had thrown him out because she had been scared of his behaviour.

One of the things Joan learned is that Ken needs to feel safe at all times and any hint of a sexual relationship makes him feel over emotional and threatened.

Their relationship has always been celibate but she wrote: 'Strangely enough this disciplined denial brought us even closer together. Although Ken is not able to express his feelings towards me there is not the necessity. His smiles laughter, tears, speak a language more eloquent than words, emotional perhaps, but from the heart.'

For several decades Joan, Ken and Norman lived happily together as at Moorend Cottage in Hartpury, Gloucestershire, and the trio worked with volunteers at charities helping homeless people in the county, giving out food on Christmas Day.

'I married at 16 and Norman was a wonderful man and a lovely husband and father,' she said. 'Because there was no sexual jealousy it was fine and Ken and Norman were like brothers. It was like a little paradise, just Ken, Norman and me.'

But Norman had a fatal heart attack and Ken developed health problems which meant he eventually had to move into Hanover Court in Cinderford.

Joan went to live with her eldest daughter but they were desperately lonely and care staff arranged for Joan to move into Ken's flat. She proposed.

Now everybody is looking forward to their wedding at Cinderford registry office on February 18, Joan's birthday. At the reception they will play Amazing Grace, Ken's lifelong favourite song with the words 'I once was lost but now I'm found'.

She says her three children are delighted and her grandchildren all want to be bridesmaids.

'People say I saved Ken,' said Joan. 'But it was actually Jeremy Sandford's book that made me look twice at the men sleeping rough and see him as the person he was.

'The sad thing is that it's still happening today, in fact it's getting worse. There are people like Ken sleeping in shop doorways all over the country.'

Ken's state of mind has has changed dramatically since he started to get help and the voices have disappeared.

He said: 'When I met Joan I was sleeping rough and wanted to kill myself. I probably would not be here now if wasn't for her leaving those sandwiches in the bin. She's a really kind person.'

When she wrote a book about their love affair in the 1980s the then Bishop of Gloucester wrote a foreword about about how they shared a deep love than can be hard for others to understand.

'To meet Ken is to encounter a living witness to the triumph of love,' he wrote.

Care home manager Helen Lee said: 'I am absolutely over the moon. When Ken first came here they struggled to live without each other so it's brilliant that she could come and join him. Everybody here is like family so we are all so excited about the wedding.'

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Culled from Daily Mail UK