After being set up on a blind date 50 years ago, an Amanzimtoti couple celebrated their golden anniversary last week.
Steve (76) and Marie Stevens (79) were introduced to each other in January 1966 when Steve accompanied Marie to a dance at Durban City Hall with their respective friends, Eloff Olivier and Shirley Reyneke.
In an ironic twist of fate, Eloff and Shirley were also joined in Holy Matrimony. They were best man and bridesmaid at Steve and Marie’s wedding and the quartet remain close friends to this day.
Our advice to young married couples is to respect one another and do things together.
Steve was born in Johannesburg and moved to Durban in 1962. Marie was born in Durban but her family farmed in Harrismith. Steve and Eloff joined the SA Navy in 1958 and the former was on board ships and often at sea, while the latter was a mechanic based in Cape Town.
They met after Eloff was transferred to take over a workshop in Durban and Steve began teaching at a radar school in the city.
Marie and Shirley met while playing in the band at the Old Apostolic Church in Woodlands, where her and Steve would later marry.
The scene was set for the opening scenes of the fairy tale when Eloff and his girlfriend Shirley asked their friends to join them at the dance.
“It was a blind date and 50 years later I’m still blind,” joked Marie. “I didn’t know what to expect. Short guys usually went for me. I thought to myself: I don’t even know what he looks like, so I was worried I might think the wrong guy was him.”
Fortunately Eloff came to the door to fetch Marie to go to the dance. As she had a knee operation a month prior and Steve had a corn removed from his foot a day or two before, they were gifted a subject for initial conversation.
However, no major sparks flew during their first date and although Marie thought Steve was a nice guy, she didn’t think much of their first meeting.
“Later in the evening, I felt cold and when Steve put his arm around me to warm me up I thought, ‘Hy’s voor op die wa’ (he’s being forward).
Steve, however had other ideas and when Shirley pointed out where Marie worked on the drive home, he pitched up the next morning to continue work his charm.
“I invited him to have coffee with me in the afternoon, where he met my mother and sister and they approved of him.
At that stage I didn’t know Steve was in the navy, only Eloff. My dad always warned me to never date a policeman or sailor, as they were bad news.”
With his trade a secret, Steve continue to visit Marie at her place of work and carried on pestering her to go out with him.
“She gave me a couple of hurdles to jump over when I wanted to propose,” remembered Steve. “As her dad was ill, I had to phone her brother-in-law to ask his permission to marry her.”
Getting the thumbs-up from Johan, her 10-year-old son from a previous marriage, was no problem as he had already fallen under Steve’s spell.
When she found out her suitor was a sailor, Marie took a photo of him with her when she went to visit her sick father and he surprisingly approved of her choice. Unfortunately he died a month before their wedding in October.
The couple moved to Toti 24 years ago. They didn’t have any children of their own but have three grandchildren and six ‘and a half’ great grandchildren.
“The secret to our long marriage is we do everything together. We also learned to give and take, and discuss things. We share the same sense of humour, and we both love nature and caravanning.
Our advice to young married couples is to respect one another and do things together. If you have a problem, sit down and discuss it. Sometimes you need your own space and you must respect that.”
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