SCHOOL BASH SPARKS LOVE
It took Southport State High School students Faye Summers and Denis Roche 34 years to fall in love. Now they are tying the knot
FAYE Summers and Denis Roche are high school sweethearts – it just took 34 years for them to realise it.
The Merrimac couple were only acquaintances when they graduated from Southport State High School in 1983 but fell in love when they attended their alma mater’s centenary ball in June last year.
Today they will marry at North Burleigh beach surrounded by their closest friends and family.
Ms Summers recalled “latching on to” Mr Roche, who is a business consultant, for the duration of the anniversary event.
“I’d had a lot of tequila,” she laughed. “I just couldn’t prise myself away from him.”
The next day they caught up again and it was raining, Mr Roche was holding an umbrella over them and he said: “If I don’t kiss you now I will regret it.”
After the reunion Ms Summers returned to Sydney and Mr Roche sent her a “long, intense love letter”, prompting a brief longdistance relationship before she moved back to the Gold Coast.
“We fell in love on the phone,” Ms Summer said. “I wasn’t looking for love. “But we are still so in love and happy.
“I never thought I would come back here (but) it is so lovely to be back – familiar but new.”
Not wanting a big “to-do”, the couple had planned to elope at Bribie Island but their family and friends had other ideas.
“They hijacked our wedding as they wanted to be involved,” said Ms Summers, who is studying to be a high disability carer.
Now 28 people will join them for their nuptials this afternoon.
“I didn’t want to get caught up in the wedding (expletive), I just wanted to marry Denis,” Ms Summers said. “He is really kind, patient and tolerant. “We are just really happy. “I say to Denis every day, ‘you’re such a good guy’.
“He says, ‘you’re the most peculiar little person I have ever met’.”