The key to a 65-year marriage
A couple who grew up in hardship found love and happiness with each other – and it’s lasted 65 years.
Derrick and Tibeth Smith celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary tomorrow, but have already marked the big day with a party on Sunday afternoon in New Plymouth, surrounded by 50 friends and their two children.
The couple, originally from Yorkshire, England, were surprised by a Yorkshire flag flying in their daughter’s backyard.
‘‘It’s put the icing on the cake for me,’’ Tibeth said.
The Smiths were married on March 6, 1954, in Yorkshire, in a small village church that is no longer standing.
Tibeth had red roses for the wedding bouquet and replicated it at her party, as well as having white roses to represent the emblem of Yorkshire.
‘‘I was married when I was 19 and we didn’t have any children and we decided that we’d enjoy life,’’ Tibeth said.
The pair came from humble beginnings, with Tibeth growing up without a father after he was killed in World War II.
Derrick did national service for the British Army after they were married.
For 12 years the couple lived without children, before adopting daughter Yvette and son Dominic from two different countries when the children were only four weeks old.
The children, now 50 and 53 respectively, never found out their history.
‘‘They never wanted to be told. And I asked them many times if they wanted to find their own parents and they said ‘no, you’re our parents, we don’t want any other parents’.’’
In the 1960s the family moved to New Zealand, living in Wellington for two years before moving to Timaru, where they stayed for another 30 years.
When the children had established careers in New Plymouth, the retired couple moved to Taranaki to be closer to them.
Tibeth said the key to a long and happy marriage was to never leave a disagreement for too long. ‘‘Well if you fall out you’ve just got to make up again because it doesn’t do you any good.
‘‘You’ve got to take the good with the bad,’’ Derrick said.
‘‘Enjoy every day of your life and live it as if it’s going to be the last day of your life, that’s all I can say to you.’’
The couple received a handwritten letter from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as well as one from the Queen to celebrate their 65 years of marriage.
Tibeth said she was still expecting one from Prince Charles as they often wrote to each other. They met when he invited her for tea in Taranaki in 2015. ‘‘He said ‘don’t you come back to England, you’re better off in New Zealand’.’’