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On April 14, 1952, the two couples were married in a joint wedding held in Bendigo and have not only managed to stay together as couples for the past 60 years, they have also remained best friends through all the highs and lows that life dishes out.

Jim, Trevor and Joan all went to school in Heathcote, at the school that used to occupy the site where Heathcote police station is.

‘‘Not her though,’’ Trevor laughed, nodding at Thelma.

‘‘She’s a ring in. From Bendigo.’’

‘‘Long Gully,’’ Thelma said.

‘‘I’m a stray.’’

Jim first met Thelma when he was driving a bus to Hepburn Springs and though Thelma said it wasn’t love at first, Jim begs to differ.

‘‘How would you know? You were sitting down the back seat there,’’ Jim teased.

‘‘She was the innocent one sitting right up the back. And it was a big bus, too, not a little bus!’’

‘‘He asked me for my number, but I gave him the wrong one,’’ Thelma said.

‘‘He did eventually ask me out, when he finally found the right one.’’

Trevor and Joan first met at a cafe during football season.

‘‘It was next to the pub,’’ Joan said.

‘‘I used to go up there after the pictures. The old man used to watch everything with those eyes, in case we were stealing lollies or something.’’

‘‘It was during the football season,’’ Trevor said.

‘‘I went up there with one of my mates and I was sitting on the butcher shop step and Joan came out (of the cafe.) So I told my mate that I was going to see if Joan would go out with me and I asked her if she’d like to walk home with me.’’

‘‘Yeah, he was ‘courting’ in those days,’’ Jim teased.

‘‘He used to stand behind the fence and Joan had to lift him up to smooch him.’’

‘‘I did not,’’ Joan laughed.

‘‘And I’ve shrunk, now.’’

Joan also said it wasn’t love at first sight, but that their love for each other grew.

‘‘About two weeks after that I was a bit late getting in and she got real crook at me,’’ Trevor said.

‘‘She said ‘You were going to be here at one o’clock. Where have you been?’ None of this, ‘Oh, just come over when you like’. That still hasn’t changed.’’

The two couples decided on a joint wedding mainly because the idea came up at the right time for both.

‘‘Well, we started by saying we wanted to get married, then these two said they wanted to get married, too,’’ Trevor said.

‘‘We got a job out at Jack Farber’s,’’ Thelma said.

‘‘So we decided to get married and take the job.’’

The wedding was held in a church in Forest St, Bendigo, and the reception at the Cherry Inn, also in Bendigo.

And while some believe that rain on a wedding day is bad luck, the Marshalls and Watkins are living proof that the opposite may well be true.

‘‘That year, 1952, it rained all that week,’’ Trevor said.

‘‘We had to go to Bendigo twice I think and it rained both times. It rained the night before and on the day of the wedding.’’

‘‘But it cleared up for the afternoon,’’ Thelma said.

The couples enjoyed separate honeymoons, the Marshalls travelling to Melbourne and the Watkins to Geelong. ‘‘I drew the line at that,’’ Jim laughed.

‘‘It rained all the way down to Geelong, too, and when we got down the highway the wipers broke down,’’ Trevor said.

‘‘Pouring rain all the way.’’

While the Marshalls never had children, Joan said they dote on their nieces and nephews.

The Watkins had three children, David, Linda and Marion, and also now have six grandchildren — though they don’t hold out much hope for great-grandchildren in the near future.

‘‘They’re all career minded, they’ve all got brains,’’ Joan laughed.

After almost 60 years of married life, the Marshalls and Watkins agree part of the reason modern relationships seem to fail so easily is that couples want everything to be perfect right away.

‘‘We never bought anything we couldn’t pay for,’’ Trevor said.

‘‘When we got married, we got the house built and then we just got the things we really wanted,’’ Joan said.

‘‘Now they want everything,’’ Thelma added.

‘‘They want their holidays, they want two cars in the family, they want to go their own ways. If he wants to do something, he goes one way and she goes the other way. They don’t do enough together.’’

Jim has one other piece of advice, only partly tongue in cheek, for all young couples starting out in married life.

‘‘Behave yourself,’’ he said.

‘‘Outside the house. That’s what you do!’’