Quinton Mallory never expected to be a newlywed at 80.

When his wife Sharon died in 2009 he thought that was it for romance.

Then he bumped into Patricia Price, at the Warwick Bowling Alley.

They’d worked together for years at the Bermuda Telephone Company, and had been neighbours as children.

“When she was 13 and I was 16 she taught me to dance,” said Mr Mallory. “It just so happened that she was the only one in the neighbourhood lucky enough to have a record player.”

They found they shared a passion for bowling, and struck up a friendship.

“We loved competing against one another,” said Mrs Mallory, 76. “We had so much fun together. We started dating after a year.”

She jokingly told Mr Mallory she’d like to marry the man of her dreams for her 75th birthday.

A few months later, on a flight from a bowling tournament in Florida, he proposed.

They married at St John’s Church on Mrs Mallory’s birthday, July 16, 2015.

“It’s a lot easier being married at this age,” said Mrs Mallory. “There’s a lot less to worry about.”

She loved that Mr Mallory was a sports trainer.

“I mainly help a few people for health reasons,” he said. “Some of my clients have high blood pressure.

“I even trained Patricia. She wanted to strengthen her legs to be a better bowler.”

He’s participated in sports all his life, captaining cricket and football teams in his younger years.

Boxing, however, has always been his love.

“I’m helping to train a couple of boxers at Controversy Gym right now,” he said. “I probably trained hundreds of people to box over the years. I trained Nikki Bascome and Teresa Perozzi in recent years.”

When people hear he’s 80 they often ask when he plans to take a break.

“Why should I retire?” he asked. “I don’t train for the money, I do it because I love it.”

To stay in shape, he runs three miles most days, sometimes more on weekends.

“I’ve run several marathons and half-marathons,” he said. “I ran the New York Marathon when I was 65.

“I think the running is why I am so healthy and fit today.”

He’d hoped to run the Bermuda Half Marathon Derby this year, just to say he did it when he was 80.

“But it will have to wait until next year, God willing” he said. “At that time my wife and I will be taking part in two bowling tournaments in Las Vegas.”

The running started when he was growing up on Dock Hill in Devonshire. His three older brothers would frequently take him along to mischievously hop trains.

“My mother, Violet, sold newspapers, and we’d go and collect them for her from town,” Mr Mallory explained.

The boys would check to make sure the conductor was busy on the other side of the passing train and then hop on for a joyride.

“Getting on was one thing, but getting off was another,” he laughed. “When you got off you’d have to run fast. If the conductor caught you, he wasn’t kind. But I never got caught. I was too fast. It was a dangerous thing to do, though.”

He was the sixth of seven children. His father Fred was a carpenter.

“My older brother Ralph introduced me to boxing,” said Mr Mallory. “He was the closest in age to me. When I was five he started wrapping my hands in cloth; we didn’t have boxing gloves.”

The exercise inevitably ended in tears.

“My mother didn’t approve of boxing,” said Mr Mallory. “So my brother would hurriedly offer me a candy or a penny to shut me up.

“It seemed to work because when he offered me that penny, the pain went right away.”

Despite that, Mr Mallory’s interest in boxing grew. In his teens he started hanging around gyms to watch boxing matches, and then started taking part in bouts at Kindley Air Force Base in St David’s.

“They’d send a bus around to collect “the boys who wanted to box”. Boxers were given $10 and access to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Mr Mallory thought he’d found heaven.

“I’d never seen a buffet like that,” he said.

He kept it a secret from his mother until his cover was blown by trainer Cyril “Slim” Burns.

“I’d just won a match,” Mr Mallory recalled. “He brought this other boxer to my house one day when I wasn’t there.”

His mother was shocked when the men mentioned his boxing.

“She said ‘My son doesn’t box’. They said, ‘Oh yes he does’.”

He got in trouble but kept at it.

“She thought boxing was dangerous, and I was going to get beat up,” he said. “I bought all these books and read up on it so I would know what to do, then I started training guys.”

In the 1960s he ran the St George’s Youth Centre and coached children in the Wellington Rovers football team.

“I always tell young people who love sports that it is not about winning, it is about doing your best,” he said.

Mr Mallory has two children, Tina and Shawn, and five grandchildren; Mrs Mallory has one son, Edward, and two grandchildren.