Give and take is key in marriage says Jane on 65th anniversary

Give and take is key in marriage says Jane on 65th anniversary

5 August 2015

JANE Cromie learnt the secret of a long marriage while flicking through a Reader’s Digest magazine in a clinic waiting room as a young newly wed.

The Ballyward woman said she was struck by the magazine’s advice to treat marriage like a see-saw with “much give or take”.

She said she took that advice to heart and as she celebrated her 65th wedding anniversary with her husband Joe last week she believes it has stood them both in good stead.

“We have had a happy married life,” she said.

“Joe was very easy to deal with and a very good man so that made it easier.”

Joe and Jane did not realise the significance of their first proper meeting at a garden fete near Ballyward in 1945.

Although they had seen each other occasionally at Sunday school at Drumgooland Presbyterian Church, Closkelt, the two had not spoken before.

When Joe asked 17 year-old Jane if he could walk her home after the fete social, it was the beginning of a friendship that would lead to their wedding five years later.

Speaking from Tullywest Manor Residential Home in Saintfield where they now live, Jane, who is now 88, said their courtship was very different to the romances of today with the couple only seeing each other at fetes or rare social events for the first two-and-a-half years.

“Times were very different and we didn’t visit each other at our houses,” she said.

“Until the fourth year, I did not see Joe that often at all and I waited until he asked me to marry him three times before I agreed. I thought we were too young.”

On their wedding day, on July 26, 1950, Jane said her mother prepared a wedding breakfast before they went to Drumgooland Church for their ceremony. 

It was the church where the pair had both been christened and Jane said it is also where their only daughter Nell was also christened and married.