She decided he was a keeper.
"It took me two years for him to take me seriously."
The two married on August 23, 1958. They began life together in a flat in Lower Hutt, and moved to Whanganui in 1960.
Walter was a civil engineer and Diana always helped in his work. She'd be shopping for bolts in a hardware store with four daughters in tow, or go in to bat for him when council planners wouldn't give a building consent.
"I said what qualifications have you got, apart from a fat gut and a blunt pencil, to change the designs of a civil engineer?
"I always think he makes the bullets, and gets me to fire them."
The two have four daughters - Nina, Paula, Helen and Marian. Their only son Richard died young, which was a tragedy for both of them.
Diana had German measles while pregnant with Richard, and he was born with a heart problem, a "blue baby". She knew something was wrong but was told she was being over anxious.
She fought to get him moved to Wellington Hospital, put her other children into a health camp and stayed there with him for three months.
The baby did get an operation, but died. Whanganui Hospital had failed to diagnose the problem or provide specialist treatment, and later apologised.
Diana was determined not to be a person who never got over her child's death. She put her energy into getting other women immunisation against German measles.
"We have to forgive. We don't forget."
After their son died Walter taught maths and physics at Wanganui High School. The four girls grew up tall, computer savvy and "mathematically gifted" like their father.
"They're quite a nice lot," he said.
When Walter and Diana bought a rural property they planted an orchard of apricots and walnuts, and other trees in Richard's memory. Diana became the national president of the New Zealand Tree Crops Association and she led a campaign to get farmers to kill possums in the area around Bushy Park.
"It was the most successful farmer-initiated possum control effort in the district."
More recently she's become a member of the Bason Botanic Gardens Trust board, and started a dahlia growers' group. She's 81 and her ambition for her 99th year is to breed a champion daffodil.
She calls herself "forceful", also "assertive to hostile".
"It's a boundary that I sort of hover on."
She said Walter has given her a lot of her own way.
He doesn't talk much, but she says he's a fine man who ought to be celebrated. And his tip for a successful marriage?
"You have got to give and take, and be prepared to take more than you give'"
