The way we were

John and I with the little sisters in 1970.  Don't you just love the hair?
 
John and I met in 1969 and got married a year and a day later – this sounds very romantic but we actually go married to get a good flat with cheap rent …
… we were living in a student flat, which was hard to heat and expensive – and both our families were incensed (this was 1969/70 – remember this was still ‘living in sin’).  John was a student at Oxford University and his college had ‘married student flats’, but you had to be married (they couldn’t condone living in sin either). The college flats were newer, cheaper and with free heating and electricity … so we thought what the heck … let’s get married.
We realised we couldn’t tell family and friends as the two groups were not going to mix, so we kept it secret from our friends.  On the Saturday before, we told our families that we were getting married the following week … and would they like to come.  All hell broke loose. I was 18, had only just finished (high)school and John was 21 and still and undergraduate.  In the end they realised we were going to do it regardless of how much they shouted.  My mother insisted we went out for a meal at a hotel because it would be “too sordid to go back to the flat where you’ve been living in sin”.  
The next day we left messages for our friends saying, “We got married yesterday, meet us in the collage bar tonight”.  Now that was a party!
 
Cheap rent isn’t the strongest reason for getting married and everyone said it wouldn’t last, but it worked for us.   When we got to our 25th anniversary my mother-in-law said she thought she should make lots of pastry letters and eat them.  We obviously wanted to know why, she replied, “It’s time I ate my words”.  
 
John and I are still best friends.  Once when asked what made our relationship work I said sense of humour, and John added we both have the ability to laugh at him!
 
AND … the one thing that I wished I knew then, that I know now is what John said to our son (the one-and-only) when he got married …
When you hit bad times, they are just that – times – they don’t last, you survive and you move on.
 

Gladys Knight (if you want to avoid the talk intro go to 1.13 mins in)