Master baker cooks 70 years of marriage

Not many people can say they worked picking apples until they were 88, but it’s just one of the things that helped a Stoke couple reach a 70-year milestone last week.

Robin and Mary Cook celebrated 70 years married last week with an afternoon tea at the Stoke retirement village they call home. Four children, including surprise twin boys, and five great grandchildren have provided them a happy life, they say.

Robin is a well-known figure across the region having taught at Waimea College, been seconded to help setup Broadgreen Intermediate as its first principal and sitting as the principal of Hampden Street School for 15 years until 1990.

That was when Robin was meant to retire, at the age 65, but life had other plans.
With grown children, and a keen interest in horticulture, Mary began picking apples and nashi for Hoddy’s Orchard on the Waimea Plains, which she continued for 20 years.

“If you went through Mary’s horticulture background, you wouldn’t have enough space in your paper,” Robin proudly interjects. Turns out she’s also been a fixture on the staff at both Kono and Sujon where she tied up both grapes and berries.

“She started for Sujon in 1985,” Robin recalls. “And when I retired in 1990, she thought ‘well, I could retire too’, and I said, ‘no, I don’t think we will Mary, I’ll come with you.”

So, for another 25 years, the couple worked together in horticulture, picking and thinning apples and tying up boysenberries and grapes.

“We always worked on the same tree, if we were thinning, we’d do a side each,” Robin says.

They continued until Robin was 88.

“One day it was 11am and he said he’d like to go home, so I thought it was time we probably stopped,” Mary says.

Robin is now 95 and Mary 92 and they both agree working outdoors kept them fit and well. The pair met at a ‘Keep Fit Club’, and grew a relationship aided by the fact that Robin was mates with Mary’s brother.

Mary was a very good netballer and according to Robin, it was her energy that sparked his interest. Robin popped the question when he was driving her home to the family farm in Southland one evening and they were married a short time later.

“We weren’t very popular as it was opening day of duck shooting season,” Robin recalls.

Mary remembers having to dig confetti out of their honeymoon luggage, a tradition that doesn’t really happen anymore.

While they had their fair share of tragedy early in the marriage, Robin says it helped bond them together. Mary’s father, a veteran of Gallipoli and France, returned from war with lasting health issues that eventually took his life, and the couple also navigated the loss of a child between their first and second.

After moving to Nelson, Mary’s mother’s health had declined, so the couple headed back to Southland after Robin’s time at Broadgreen.

“One day we were walking up the road and the southerly was blowing, and Mary said, ‘That’s it, I’ve had enough’.”

And so, they headed back to the Top of the South, stopping for a year in Karamea.

“I loved it there, I could’ve stayed there forever,” Mary recalls. “I white baited and played golf, haven’t played golf since then.”

Robin on the other hand was a member of Greenacres golfclub for 40 years. He’s also a life member of Richmond Probus.

“The Education Board bought me back to Nelson from Karamea in 1975 and we’ve been here ever since,” Robin says.

The couple moved into the Omaio Stoke Retirement Village 11 years ago, Robin maintaining it will be their final move short of the crematorium, having moved house 15 times.

They say the key to a successful marriage is to sort things out.

“We argue, but we always sort it out,” Mary says. That, and keeping Robin well fed on his weekly batch of Tango muffins, she adds.