65 years of marital bliss

The secret to celebrating 65 years of marital bliss is grounded in tolerance of each other, Donald John Duff and Dr E Marilyn Duff declare.

On Sunday, the couple celebrated their 65th anniversary with a blessing inside the Webster Memorial United Church in St Andrew where The Gleaner caught up with them.

During an interview with The Gleaner, Marilyn said she believes too Jamaicans are not remaining in love because they are not tolerant of each other in relationships, dating or marriage.

“I see so many people getting married and then giving up. I think both persons have to show much more tolerance for each other,” Marilyn said.

Marilyn is also concerned about the fact that too many couples today are choosing not to get married or have children.

“I see so many disrupted family life in Jamaica, and even abroad. I think it’s best people get married and be secured. It’s much better to get married and settle down,” Marilyn told The Gleaner.

Of her marriage to Donald, she said, “For us, the secret to enjoying our 65 years of marriage is tolerance. You just have to be patient and tolerant. As a nurse, I tended to have that attribute and personality, and we just got along. We were just good friends.”

Tolerance is a lesson they both learnt from not being able to have children of their own.

“We had a difficulty having children. We also decided not to adopt, because we were quite active people. We used to do a lot of sailing. I used to do a lot of presidential events with horses and he used to have his singing and go with his music theatrical groups, so we had a lot of interest outside and we had a lot in common that we used to do together and I guess, time just passed,” Marilyn said.

Donald will celebrate his 90th birthday next month, while Marilyn is now 86 years of age.

Donald, who is now partially deaf, asked that his wife share their love story with The Gleaner.

MET ON A BLIND DATE

Donald and Marilyn met in Canada 66 years ago, where Donald is a native, went to university and became an engineer. Marilyn had gone there to attend university and practise at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal to become a nurse.

The two met on a blind date after Marilyn was pressured by her colleagues to go out after being on duty for two weeks without a break.

“I was just determined not to go out that night, but I had friends in the residence where I was living who begged me to go out with a group of engineers from Ottawa. The big selling point was that they had jobs, they had money and they weren’t students and we would go on a blind date,” Marilyn told The Gleaner with laughter.

“We went to a beautiful place in Pointe-Claire in Quebec; a beautiful nightclub, and that’s how we met and we have not been able to separate since.”

In May 1959, Donald proposed to Marilyn, and they later married.

Marilyn said she knew Donald was “the one” from the first evening they met.

“He was good looking. He was smart. He was very tall and handsome and I thought I met the man of my dreams…and I was just 20 years old at the time,” she told The Gleaner.

Like most old love stories, the two communicated through handwritten love letters. Donald would indicate in his letters the dates when he would be in Ottawa for them to meet up.

“I did have a phone on the floor, but it wasn’t in my room, so we were mostly writing letters,” she explained.

Their wedding took place on the tropical paradise of Jamaica – inside the now 360-year-old St Andrew Parish Church.

After Canada got too cold for their ageing bones, Marilyn said making the final decision to migrate to Jamaica to enjoy their blissful years was an easy decision for the couple.

“We went back to Canada for a number of years, but then the cold took us, or took me rather, and one winter we decided to just come back. He got a job and I was working at Nuttall [Memorial] Hospital and so we just came back and settled in Jamaica,” Marilyn told The Gleaner.

MAGNIFICENT CELEBRATION

Marilyn said celebrating their 65th anniversary in the house of God at the Webster Memorial United Church was magnificent.

She is even more grateful that as an elderly couple, they both survived the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We very much appreciated the blessing of being in church. We have been going to church online and because of our anniversary, we decided that we would prefer the blessing in the church,” Marilyn said.

“I was raised in the Anglican Church at the St Andrew Parish Church. When I was living near Half-Way Tree, my godmother took me to Webster when it opened in the 1940s. Later on, I just liked the minister who happened to be there and my mother liked him as well, and we decided to go to Webster and changed from the Anglican Church,” she explained.

Marilyn then encouraged her husband into the religious faith, as Donald was a passionate singer in his younger years, and he became a part of the church’s choir.

After returning to Jamaica, Marilyn did her PhD at the University of the West Indies, Mona and then lectured for around 15 years.

Donald worked with IBM for 25 years before joining KPMG and eventually retired in early 2000s.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com