How I met my partner: West Cork school sweethearts have spent half their lives together

Lillie and Seán Vincent-Phair have been together half of their lives this year, after first starting a relationship when they were both in secondary school.

Lillie told The Echo: “When we first met we were both going to school in Clonakilty, I was in Sacred Heart and he was in the Community College, we were in the same year. We had mutual friends, and one of my really close friends was dating one of Seán’s really close friends.

“We started going out when we were 17, in the September of sixth year - it seems like a lifetime ago, I’m 35 now so we’ve been together half my life, which is kind of crazy.

“I went on and did massage in Cork College of Commerce for two years, and Seán did film and TV production in St John’s, also a two year course.

“The first year I lived with some of my friends and he lived with his, then in second year we moved in together with a few friends.” They moved in together by themselves after college in Clonakilty, where they have been since.

Lillie recalled: “He proposed in 2017, it was my birthday in the January and he surprised me with a trip in the February, he flew us over to Liverpool and then we went up to Leeds to see a few friends, we went to a gig and that evening at 2am we were at a friends house and a taxi pulled up to take us to the airport to Amsterdam.

“We’d been going out for so long, and we had talked about marriage and that it was what we wanted to do down the line, but there was no rush, so when it did actually happen I was so surprised.

“It was funny, he had planned this dinner one of the evenings in a fancy restaurant and he was going to do it there but when we got there it was so overbearing, there were waiters coming up to us every two minutes and he decided he couldn’t do it there.

“He planned to do it after the dinner, there were lots of really nice bridges he thought would be a good spot but when we left the restaurant it was bucketing down with rain.

“He was freaking out and we were just running through rain, we jumped into a doorway to get under some cover and I was getting google maps up on my phone to find a bar or somewhere we could go, and I turned around and he was just down on one knee – he decided he needed to do it right now.” 

They got married in 2019 in the Algarve in Portugal and had a mini honeymoon after in Lisbon, then they went to Thailand for three weeks for their proper honeymoon in January 2020, narrowly avoiding Covid restrictions.

“When we were flying home talks of Covid were just beginning, they were handing out masks at the airport and spraying down the plane seats, we thought it was so weird! Then a couple of months later, lockdown kicked in so we just got our wedding and honeymoon in."

Seán works as a cameraman, and has his own company, while Lillie has a nail salon in Clonakilty, having started in the corner of a friend’s hair salon, then operating from a wooden cabin and then a pop up shop before getting her own premises, getting the keys the same week as she got married.

She explained: “Because we’re both self employed, Seán is good to follow my hours, if I’m off he’ll try to be off.

Reflecting back on how lucky they were to meet each other when they were teenagers, she said: “We started going out so young that we kind of grew up together.”