By CASEY NEILL
BEFORE Val Evans can explain what she likes most about her husband John, he jumps in with a few choice suggestions.
“Handsome, witty… ” he says, a cheeky grin spreading across his face.
Val responds with equal wit.
“Honest John, know-all John… ”
It’s an easy banter they’ve developed over their 65 years of marriage.
“But he’s a pretty good person,” Val said.
“I have never met anyone I would rather be with.
“It’s been bliss and hiss. You can’t agree all the time.
“All these women that say ‘we’ve never had a cross word’ they can’t have any opinion of their own, I don’t think.”
John agreed that accepting each other’s differences was key.
“She has a nice personality and I regard her as my best earthly friend,” he said.
“I value the relationship at whatever cost, just about. I’ll do my best to maintain it.”
John, 89, and Val, 84, celebrated their 65th anniversary with a high tea with family at their daughter Janine’s Berwick home on 16 May.
“I’m amazed we’re still here. We talk about people that we used to go dancing with and that we knew – they’re all gone,” Val said.
John said he was “grateful that we’ve been spared this long”.
“Most of my contemporaries are long gone,” he said.
Val was 16 when she met John, then 21, at a Saturday night dance at Dandenong Town Hall.
“I liked the look of him, and I said to my girlfriend ‘I like that fellow over there’,” she said.
John interjected: “You liked the cut of his jib.”
“He asked me to dance,” Val said, redirecting the conversation.
But it wasn’t happily ever after.
“One night he took me to the pictures, bought me a box of chocolates. I had a nice night. We got to our gate and he said ‘I won’t be seeing you anymore’,” Val said.
“But then a few weeks later I was coming home from work, walking up Clow Street and he stopped me and he said ‘I’ve got a party to go to, will you come with me?’.
“And I said yes. And that was it.”
They married at St James’ Anglican Church aged 19 and 24, on 20 May 1950.
“When I was going to be married, mum said ‘now I think he’s a very nice fellow, but if it doesn’t work out you can’t come home’,” Val said.
“She was a lovely mother, but my two brothers and sister shared a bedroom and my sister was going to have my bedroom.
“Anyway, it worked out.”
They lived in a bungalow in Bulong Street, Dandenong, after their nuptials.
“Then John built our house. It took him seven years, up in Seventh Avenue, Dandenong,” Val said.
They moved to Berwick about a year ago after living in Somerset Drive, Dandenong North, for 31 years.
They have two daughters, Judith and Janine, and three grandchildren.
