Diamond anniversary dance

IN TUNE: Beverley Brown, 81, and her husband Peter Brown, 84, celebrated 60 years of marriage last week, and together they have shared many laughs right from day one. PHOTO/MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM.

What's the secret to a long marriage?

If you're a man it may be meeting your in-laws while you're dressed as a woman.

Peter Brown, 84, and Beverley Brown, 81, were picked up in a white Rolls-Royce and taken to the Whangarei Freemasons Centre where they celebrated their 60 years of marriage with about 60 friends and family members last week.

The story of how these two hit it off about 63 years ago is not your typical love story. At a vice-versa party Mr Brown walked Mrs Brown home while he was dressed as a woman.

"Peter was dressed in a varsity blazer and a skirt and boots and his friend was dressed with balloons under his jumper and trousers because they didn't have enough clothes for two people, just half each," Mrs Brown recalls.

She took Mr Brown inside to meet her mum and thought it would go terribly.

"I thought, 'Oh my goodness my mother is going to go crook, she's really going to disapprove of this guy smoking a pipe, half dressed as a woman, had a beer or two and wearing boots'."

But both her mum and dad approved of their daughter's suitor and described him as "a nice young man".

"And I got on very well with my mother-in-law after that," laughed Mr Brown.

The two, originally from Christchurch, went to teachers' college and university together and Mrs Brown followed Mr Brown wherever his job as a health inspector took him.

Eventually in 1965 it was Whangarei where Mrs Brown was a music teacher, deputy principal and eventually took a job at the department of education helping teachers with programmes for struggling students.

"[We enjoyed it] up here, we had a boat and the kids went diving. Every January we spent with the kids in the Bay of Islands and the kids enjoyed it," said Mrs Brown.

Throughout their marriage the two have shared a mutual love for music, geology and travel and had three children, three grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

So what attracted them to each other?

"Her legs," laughed Mr Brown. "No, good looking bird she was, very very musical, it was a mutual attraction. We were involved in the same things, same background," he said.

And Mrs Brown on her husband?

"He was a good singer, a tremendously good swimmer and gymnast and I thought he looked alright."

The secret to 60 years of marriage?

"Tell me, lover boy," Mrs Brown says glancing her husband's way.

"Well, Henry Ford had the answer to that. He was asked the same question on his diamond anniversary and he said: 'I apply the same system to my marriage as I do to making cars in that I always stick to the same model'."