Their combined age was 120, not counting the months.
Between them they boasted five marriages, six children, and a lifetime amassing separate fortunes that totalled more than £750million.
But when Sir Paul McCartney emerged yesterday with a new bride on his arm, the clock turned back half a century to the golden age of the Beatles. Well, almost.
Truth is, there was precious little Beatlemania yesterday outside Marylebone register office, which fans besieged 42 years ago for McCartney’s wedding to Linda.
No screaming girls trying to tear off a piece of his suit, no one fainting, no teenagers running behind the wedding car in tears.
Although there was a decent turnout for his marriage to Nancy Shevell, time had clearly ticked away for the faithful just as relentlessly as it had for McCartney.
Greying former followers of the Fab Four stood shoulder to shoulder with a generation born too late to know the Sixties. Policemen far younger than McCartney was when he married here first time round helped to marshal grandmothers, pensioners and bus-pass holders in the crowd.
But 13 years after Linda’s tragic death from cancer - and three years on from his acrimonious divorce from Heather Mills - McCartney, 70 next birthday, gave a passable impression yesterday of being like a teenager in love again.
His American heiress bride, born in the same year the Beatles were starting up, looked pretty chuffed too. How did he feel, someone asked him?
“Terrific!” he replied. “I feel absolutely wonderful... I feel married!”
Then, shaking hands with fans through the window of a car that drove him into his London house for the reception, he waved, gave high fives and thumbs-up signs.
This wasn’t an occasion on the scale of his elaborate wedding to Heather Mills, either in cost or production. Understated, we were told, was precisely what the happy couple wanted.
The new Lady Macca, 51, wore a simple but stunning white dress, believed to have been designed by the ex-Beatle’s daughter Stella. McCartney wore a sober suit and a several megawatt smile.
Money can’t buy you love, the former mop-top once sang, but it can buy a whacking great engagement ring - a 1925 Cartier solitaire diamond costing £400,000, to be precise. Even from a distance, it caught what little sunlight there was on Nancy’s finger during an otherwise grey afternoon. Rose petals were used for confetti.
The couple had earlier broken with tradition by spending the morning relaxing together at home before working out at the gym. No precise time was given publicly for the ceremony and Superintendent Registrar Alison Cathcart signed a confidentiality agreement not to disclose details. Hence, spectators who did turn up at the Marylebone Road venue did so early.
Chiara Amato had been doorstepping the register office since September 30. Sitting on a cold slab beneath the old town hall’s towering pillars - and holding a bunch of Paul and Nancy wedding balloons - she told me: “I think I was born in the wrong age.
“So many times I have dreamed of being a teenager when the Beatles started. I was six years old when I first listened to their music and I’ve been listening ever since.”
The 35-year-old Italian architect, studying in London, has been to 27 McCartney concerts around the world and lives just around the corner from Abbey Road.
Why was she so immersed in McCartney? “It is like when you love someone - you can’t really explain why,” she said. “I just love him because he’s Paul.” At least Will and Jan Davidson, on the far side of 60, could lay claim to being around when it was all happening. Jan has every single and LP the foursome ever produced (and still has the Dansette she used to play them on).
On the town hall steps yesterday they were joined by Marita Valentin, 65 - on her way to church when she found out what was going on. She skipped morning prayers to stay for the next six hours. “I’m sure God will forgive me,” she told me. “I’ve loved Paul McCartney all my life.”
The newlyweds exchanged “simple vows” during the £1,500 service and kissed to applause from a small gathering of family and friends, including Ringo Starr and his wife Barbara Bach and George Harrison’s widow Olivia. Sir Paul’s younger brother Mike, 67, was the best man and Miss Shevell was given away by her son Arlen Blakeman, 18, by her marriage to lawyer Bruce Blakeman.
Sir Paul and Heather Mills’ daughter, Beatrice, eight, was the sole bridesmaid. Daughters Mary and Stella also attended. The date was reportedly chosen because it would have been the 71st birthday of Sir PaulÕs former bandmate John Lennon.
Sir Paul lost his first wife in 1998 to cancer. He went on to marry former model Heather Mills, a union that ended with an acrimonious divorce in 2008. Lady McCartney, previously married for more than 20 years to Mr Blakeman, is an executive at a New Jersey-based trucking company owned by her father.
Back at St JohnÕs Wood, in the house McCartney has owned since 1965, guests were treated to vegan wedding cake and non-vintage Dumangin grande reserve champagne costing £26.50 a bottle.
Music could later be heard drifting up into the evening sky. No immediate word on whether McCartney or any other old rockers joined in, but with one side of the family from Liverpool and the other hailing from New Jersey, one insider predicted it was “more likely than not”. McCartney is understood to have written a special song for Nancy and was threatening to get the guitar out. Just like the old days, in fact. - Daily Mail