Allen and Gloria Robinson have been married 60 years today. Photo / George Novak
By Samantha Motion
To Gloria Robinson, reaching 60 years of marriage with her husband Allen Robinson was going to be "just a number".
Then, the cards arrived: Queen Elizabeth II, Govenor General Patsy Reddy, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and MP Simon Bridges.
"They blew me away," Gloria said.
After a family celebration on the weekend, today the couple will mark their diamond anniversary in Mount Maunganui, where they have lived for all but a week of their married lives.
She was born in Hamilton, he in Waikino and they met in Paeroa. He used to wolf whistle at her from his job site as she biked past, she said.
"He never asked me out until he got a car," Gloria said. "Before that, he had a scooter."
They married in Paeroa in 1961 - she a sheltered 18-year-old and he a 20-year-old carpentry and joinery apprentices who loved the outdoors.
His life full of fishing and hunting and rabbit pies and dancing was a whole new world for a girl who mostly stayed indoors and rarely left home alone.
Seven days after the wedding, they moved to Mount Maunganui, where Allen had bought a section at 51 Valley Rd for £700. They lived there for 30 years before moving to a new home they built overlooking Blake Park on a nearby street, which they still call home today.
They were among a generation of young couples moving to the Mount at the time, as transformed from a holiday town populated with baches to a residential community.
Allen said the biggest change they have seen in the Mount was the decade from about 1965 when the nearby export wharf started "exploding" with activity and people followed.
As the town developed, real estate agents needed someone to do maintenance and Allen stepped in.
That experience - and multitudes of Mount kids with soccer and cricket balls - led to a deal with State Insurance fixing broken windows.
And thus, his re-glazing and maintenance business was born, one the couple would have for 55 years until it retired with them.
Gloria did the administration from home - unpaid, she noted - but felt her first job was always as a mum, being there for the couple's three children: Denise, Jennifer and Brian, now in their 50s.
In the 1970s they bought a little old house at the bottom end of the Mount, did it up and sold it. Then they bought a section on Matai Rd and spend three years toiling on weekends to build a two-storey block of six flats.
They sold the flats in 2011 and they are still there today, complete with the original mailbox.
Their kids grew up cardboard surfing on a huge sandhill near their home, fishing off the wharf and having fish and chips at Shellrock Takeaways - still in business.
Gloria said their marriage grew up with the Mount.
"We were young and we grew with it."
Allen said starting their married life in a town where they didn't know a soul helped keep them together.
The couple laughed a lot and poked fun at each other often as they recounted the highlights of their six decades together to the Bay of Plenty Times.
Gloria corrected Allen on a date and he stage whispered: "look what I've been putting up with for 60 years".
He claimed he was never home late from work, never went to the club, and she was right on cue: "yeah right, pull the other leg".
Eldest daughter Denise Nelson said her parents had always said "life is for living", and instilled that philosophy in their children.
She felt lucky to have parents who had always been involved in her life, and the lives of her siblings. Now "Nanny and Poppa" were doing the same for their five grandchildren.
Nelson said giving each other space, while remaining close and working towards common goals was why her parents had stayed together so long.
Gloria said learning to give and take was another big part of making it work, while Allen reckoned it was also about having "different personalities" - "AHEM" - as well as shared interests.
The couple has given decades to local sport - first rugby (Allen refereed for more than three decades) and later hockey, badminton, bowls.
But it was tennis that became their "fourth child".
Along with years of association with the Mount Maunganui Tennis Club, Allen also helped start a Western Bay of Plenty tennis club, where he was president for 17 years.
Gloria got involved in the 70s, working with the junior players.
Over the last decade, the couple has compiled and self-published a book about tennis in Mount Maunganui, preserving the stories of 24 tennis families.
Allen said they felt the stories would be lost if they did not write it.
"Our first passion has been tennis. Mount Maunganui would come next," he said.
The first 200-print run of their labour of love - Memories of Tennis and Families at Mount Maunganui over 100 years - was gone before they knew it, so they have done a second.
Anyone seeking a copy of the book can email allglo@xtra.co.nz.
The animal was euthanised after ripping through a wire fence.