Date within Text Title link?

I’m using text-only related posts. I want to include the post date, ideally in [dd mmm, yyyy] format, *within* the hyperlink that at present only shows the post title.

I found THIS article that was helpful, but not quite.

Using it, I get the post date, but not within the link. Only the title is hyperlinked. And the date is [dd MMM yyyy].

My coding skills aren’t great, and I tried fooling around with it, but with no luck. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Here’s my current version of the key line (I think it’s line 255) in microkids-related-posts.php:

$output .= mysql2date('j F Y', $related_post->post_date) . " - <a href=\"".get_permalink( $related_post->ID )."\">".$related_post->post_title."</a>"; $output .= "</li>\n";

And HERE’s a live example.