Childhood sweethearts celebrate 70 years of marriage
After more than seven decades together, Nelson couple Gilbert and Joan Mackie know a thing or two about what makes a happy marriage.
The couple recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary and the lounge in their villa at Summerset in the Sun retirement village in Stoke is filled with cards and flowers from friends and family. The first to arrive was a card from the Queen, congratulating them on reaching the milestone of 70 years of marriage.
Gilbert and Joan, aged 94 and 90, agree their success comes down to hard work and being dedicated to each other.
"We just got married, had children and worked, that was it," Joan said. "It is quite an achievement when I stop and think about it."
"She was my sweetheart then and she is still my sweetheart, it hasn't changed" Gilbert said.
He was working as a farmer in French Pass and Joan was living with her family in Admiralty Bay when their paths first crossed.
Gilbert said he was a very shy young lad when he met Joan on November 16, 1940 at a dance at the local hall. Several months passed before he saw her again when she returned to French Pass to work as a postmistress.
"She was only a young chick of about 15 or something then and I was only 18," Gilbert said.
Almost three years to the day they first met, the couple became engaged.
Gilbert said in those days you had to get permission, so he wrote a letter to Joan's father asking for her hand in marriage.
"I wrote a letter that I thought was good and I said [to Joan] you better read that," Gilbert said.
"She reached for a pen and wrote on the bottom, 'Dad, you had better say yes, Joan', so I not only got one hand, I got two."
The couple were married on November 3, 1945 in Blenheim.
In the early days they lived on Kenny Isle, in the outer Pelorus Sound where Gilbert worked on a 6000 acre farm with nearly 10,000 sheep and 450 cattle and Joan took on the job of cooking in the cookhouse.
There was no electricity and during the shearing season, Joan would be up long before the crack of dawn to light the woodstove and get the water hot enough for the cups of tea and food for the 22 shearers.
With hills too steep to farm with horses, Gilbert would also be awake in the early hours, up the hill with the dogs at the break of day ready to muster.
"That was only a tiny bit of our lives, a tiny bit, the first five years say," Joan said.
They went on to have two daughters and a son, who Joan taught via correspondence before they moved into Blenheim so the kids could attend school.
Gilbert's work farming then took them to Parnassus in North Canterbury and onto Dorie, near Ashburton for 10 years.
Once the kids had they left home they made the decision to come back to Nelson to be amongst family.
"I thought I'd had enough of farming, and farming in Nelson is totally different from where we had been," Gilbert said.
So he bought a taxi license and drove a taxi for 12 years in Nelson where he met "oodles of people".
The couple then retired and bought a house in the Mahau Sounds, just out of Havelock.
Having lived in different places throughout the country, Gilbert said Joan had been the backbone in their life and did a lot of the hard work behind the scenes.
"Everything landed on her, all the cooking and going to different farms, having to look after and care for our children as they grew up, she was there for everything," Gilbert said.
The couple have five grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren spread throughout New Zealand and Australia who gathered in Nelson for the anniversary celebrations.
"We have been really blessed," Joan said. "We are very pleased and proud of them."
There were no secrets to a long and happy marriage but hard work was important, Joan said.
"The thing is we have been together so long, each one relies on the other," Gilbert said.
"Be dedicated to one another."
"And learn from each other," Joan said.
Written by Samantha Gee. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
Video & image credit: Marion van Dijk
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