Noeleen and Graeme admit they still feel like a pair of lovestruck teens as they celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, describing their relationship as ‘a match made in heaven’.

“That’s exactly what we think. We feel very blessed,” says Noeleen, as Graeme looks at his wife of exactly two years and one month adoringly, the big bunch of red roses he ordered for her taking pride of place in their beautiful apartment at Ryman Healthcare’s Keith Park Village in Hobsonville.

“It’s an amazing thing to happen,” Graeme beams.

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Their love story has become a delightful feature of the musical evenings the two experienced musicians put on for fellow residents in their apartment.

Noeleen accompanies Graeme’s cello with the piano, and then between numbers they tell everyone how they came to be striking the right notes in both senses.

“There’s no question, when we tell our story it impacts people positively,” says Graeme, a retired quantity surveyor.

Love came out of the blue for the couple, who had been friends, along with their late spouses, Brian and Beverley, for over 60 years.

Beverley was Noeleen’s best friend at teacher training college and they both attended each other’s weddings within a space of two weeks during the school holidays in 1964.

Graeme and Beverley moved to Australia in 1977 but the couples stayed in touch, regularly writing and catching up despite their busy lives working and raising three daughters in Graeme and Beverley’s case, and three sons and a daughter for Noeleen and Brian.

Then, fast forward to 2022, Graeme had been widowed for around 18 months when he saw by chance on Facebook a photo of the old church organ he used to play at his former church Mt Albert Methodist back in the 1970s.

He decided to book a ‘nostalgia trip’ to New Zealand, and Noeleen kindly offered him her guest room for the week in her Te Atatū home while her new apartment was being built.

“I wasn’t looking for a husband,” she says, having been widowed for 19 years at that point. “I organised a whole programme of events for him, cafés, meeting friends. I even brought him to look at the village.”

Noeleen and Graeme make the perfect duet

Striking the right notes together!

But when the week was over and Graeme went to leave, he just couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye and it was then that the lightning bolt moment happened.

Says Graeme: “I didn’t feel like saying goodbye, I just said, ‘I love you’.”

It had an instant effect on Noeleen too.

“I said, ‘Oh, you’re going to turn my life upside down!’”

Graeme returned to New Zealand a couple of weeks later in the September where he faced most of Noeleen’s family for the big inquisition, accidentally letting out that they were going to get married in the coming January.

Laughing at the memory, Noeleen says: “It broke the shock levels for my family, that’s for sure! My grandson Andrew said, ‘hang on Graeme, are you engaged? Are you planning to propose to my Nana? I think you should get down on one knee and propose!’”

Graeme was happy to oblige, using one of the roses left from a bunch he had bought Noeleen to get down on bended knee and pop the question, and the rest is history!

They got married on 14 January 2023 at The Brigham in Hobsonville, and the cruise that Graeme originally booked to go on alone became the perfect honeymoon destination.

The pair says they went through a long list of discussion points about how their life as newlyweds in their 80s could work, and now spend their time divided between Graeme’s place on the Sunshine Coast and Keith Park Village, which they can just lock up and leave knowing it’s safe and secure in their absence.

Says Noeleen on the prospect of love in later life: “My advice is to be open to the possibility if you want that for the future.

“We had 60 years of friendship as a foundation so it wasn’t like we’d just met, and I think it’s important to have common interests and common goals. You have got to really choose to do worthwhile, positive things together,” she adds.

And they are certainly doing that – as well as their strong, Christian faith, they indulge their shared love of music by attending concerts and Graeme also plays in the St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra. They are also trying new things too, including tango lessons taught by another village resident!

Says Graeme: “From the moment we got married, we were very much on the same page.

"I love Noeleen's positive approach to life - if i have a problem, she looks for a solution. And her beautiful smile melts my heart,” he adds.

Keith Park Village Manager Kim Dawson says theirs is an ‘awesome love story’ which other residents love hearing about.

“Noeleen and Graeme are an absolutely gorgeous and gracious couple. When they play music together, it’s so beautiful it almost moves you to tears, and we are so lucky to have them in the village.

“I’m thrilled for them that they have found love again with each other.”