It was a double celebration when Colin and Jacqui Mason received their NHS long-service awards from University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) chief executive Dame Julie Moore – because love had blossomed for the couple 40 years earlier on their first day at work.

“The very first day we started work we met each other and it was pretty much the classic story of love at first sight,” said Colin.

“Within about a month of meeting we started going out with each other and 40 years later, here we are married and we’re still going out with each other. It’s the best day’s work I ever did!”

The pair met in September 1975, when Colin was 16 and Jacqui 17, on the first day of an induction course at Stowe House, Lichfield, for NHS starters on the Ordinary National Diploma course.

They both wanted to become laboratory technicians and Colin was starting his training at the old Dudley Road Hospital while Jacqui was based at Walsall Manor Hospital.

As their love blossomed so did their careers, taking in most of the major hospitals around Birmingham until they ended up working together some 15 years ago at Selly Oak and the old Queen Elizabeth Hospitals, which were to become UHB.

True love never runs entirely smoothly, of course and their relationship has survived an early break-up - and a spell when Colin was Jacqui’s boss.

“There’s no other way of putting it, after we had been going out for a couple of months she dumped me,” recalls Colin. “There was a year when we would regularly see each other at college and not speak to each other. But to my eternal gratitude Jacqui then asked me to go to a party with her and we never looked back.”

Colin, now 56, popped the question on Valentine’s Day in 1978 and the couple married in 1980. Both Birmingham born and bred, they now live in Solihull with sons Christian, 25, and Michael, 23.

Jacqui, 57, has worked part-time as a biomedical scientist since the children were born while Colin moved from his lab-based role to become pathology IT manager at UHB two years ago.

The couple insist that working together has not affected their relationship.

“It has worked really well for us,” said Colin. “Although we’ve worked in the same area for many years we often wouldn’t see each other all day.

“We did have a two to three year spell when I was Jacqui’s boss and we were working in a very small group in quite a confined area, but it worked just fine. At work you maintain a professional relationship.”

“Colin was boss at work but I was boss at home,” added Jacqui with a smile.

The couple are hoping to retire when Colin is 60 and spend more time indulging in their passion for cruises.

“By that time we’ll have clocked up almost 90 years of NHS service between us, the vast majority of which we’ve very much enjoyed,” said Colin.