Mrs Todd (nee Murrell) still vividly remembers meeting her husband-to-be Mr Wall - also English-born - when they both happened to be visiting Bournemouth, the English seaside city, one day in 1956.
``She was coming down the steps in Bournemouth, and I thought `She's not bad','' he said.
``It really was love at first sight and he asked me to marry him three weeks later,'' Mrs Wall said.
They were married on February 22, 1958.
These days, Mrs Todd and her husband are well-known members of the Brighton community, and their diamond anniversary was a ``milestone''.
``It's a very special day for us.
``And we're still being in love as much today as when we first met,'' she said.
``It's deepened,'' he added.
``She's weathered well,'' she said, with a big smile.
Tomorrow, about 100 friends and family members, including their children Angus Wall and Allison Shaw, will gather for a bigger celebration.
Married life has been happy, but with plenty of challenges along the way.
Early in their married life they were still young, and had little money.
One winter evening they found themselves walking home, the snow falling, and knew they had no money until they would be paid later in the week, and there was no food in their cupboards.
They looked wistfully into the window of a local butcher shop, then closed for the night, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and then, ``dreaming what we'd have for dinner'', were walking away.
That was when a man, who turned out to be the owner of the shop, approached them, having somehow realised their plight.
He opened the shop for them, and provided a carton of food, which they paid for at the end of the week.
``We were being shown that we would always be taken care of,'' Mrs Wall said.
The couple later emigrated to New Zealand, and to Dunedin, in 1971, where Mr Wall worked for about three years as a compositor for the Otago Daily Times.
Asked for the key to marital success, Mrs Wall said ``the love is the foundation''.
``If you don't have a good strong foundation, with the first wind it's going to start to crumble.''
Other key elements included ``communication, respect, no expectations, tolerance''.
``And be grateful for each other every day.''
