When Priska Tan and Dennis Wee first clapped eyes on each other one fateful evening in 1974, it was love at first sight for him and revulsion for her.

She recalls with a chuckle: 'Dennis walked past our table, smiling at me. I turned to my friends and whispered with a shudder, 'I'll never go out with this kind of guy.' '

The place was De Castle Coffee House in Katong Shopping Centre. She was hanging out with friends as an off- duty waitress at the coffee house. It was her holiday job.

He was 22 while she was 16.

She thought he looked like a drug addict, with his skeletal frame, faded jeans, long shaggy hair and moustache.

But love will find a way.

He says it was her obvious dislike that made her stand out from other girls he had dated. He coyly refuses to reveal just how many others.

Soon the unlikely pair found themselves meeting up when neighbourhood friends went out as a group.

However, the road to romance was rocky as he often had to go away for months on end for oil-rig assignments - not an ideal situation for courtship.

Cupid's arrow finally struck her when she met his grandparents, which changed her impression of him.

About a year after they first met, he invited her and a group of friends home to his grandparents' apartment in Ceylon Road, where he lived with them.

She says: 'When I saw how wholesome his family was and how much his grandparents doted on him, I realised he was not so bad after all.'

He was her first boyfriend. She had other suitors before him but her mother was so strict that she would screen love letters from them.

No prizes for guessing the older woman's reaction when she met Mr Wee. Ms Tan recalls: 'My mother was incredulous. She said, 'I gave you two big beautiful eyes and this is what you bring back?' '

Ms Tan was allowed to date him although she could never take him home and there was no telephone in her house.

He paid her surprise visits and waited outside her gate when she could not go out.

He also cleaned up his act, going full-time with his oil-rig surveyor job and trimming his hair.

They dated for about five years, during which she learnt how to cook his favourite Peranakan dishes while he was away on overseas assignments, and rode pillion when he went street-racing at Dhoby Ghaut on his American Starsand Stripes bike.

They got married in 1981 and held a Chinese wedding dinner at the Hotel Grand Central.

Almost three decades down the line, even the memory of how he proposed is somewhat vague.

She explains: 'He just did it when we were at our friend's apartment. We had been dating for five years, tying the knot came naturally for us.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.