By ALENA HIGGINS
Couple show the world they still care…
AS NORM and Verlie Madsen gaze into each other’s eyes from across the kitchen table it’s obvious they’re still madly in love.
The Warwick couple tied the knot 60 years ago today (Thursday), cementing a heart-warming tale of love that has endured the test of time.
Freestone born and bred, the love birds grew up on properties about four miles from one another and came face-to-face as five-year-olds when they were placed in the same prep class at Freestone Primary School.
Not long after, Norm started kicking about with another Madsen, Verlie’s older brother Doug, and the seven siblings from both families, who are no relation but share the common Danish surname, remained friends throughout their secondary schooling at Warwick High.
But it wasn’t until their late teens that the pair started going steady.
While exhibiting produce at the Warwick Show as members of a junior famers club, Verlie, then 17, caught Norm’s eye.
“We put hessian down from the backdrops of the display to the floor so we could hide our rubbish and, of course, you couldn’t see anything down there,” Norm said.
“And I had this girl here holding a torch for me and then it struck me and I thought, “oh, she’s a pretty good looking girl,” he said.
“As if he hadn’t known me all my life,” Verlie laughed.
Two years later Norm drummed up the courage to ask for his sweetheart’s hand in marriage, which was quite a feat as “pop liked to talk”, Norm recalls.
“We were out the front there and I’m desperately trying to ask pop if I can have his daughter’s hand in marriage, pop was talking away flat out and they called us in for tea so I blurted it out and he said ‘yeah it’ll be right’ and we went in for tea – I mean you’ve got to laugh,” he said.
After a four-year courtship they married in front of family and a friend at St Mark’s Church in Warwick and honeymooned at Maroochydore before beginning their new lives on Norm’s family farm.
Not long after, they welcomed their first child, Lynne, and two other girls, Debbie and Katherine, followed suit.
Looking back, the lively couple, who are now in their early 80s, agree their most triumphant moment was welcoming their children into the world, who have since bestowed them with eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren they describe as “the light of our lives”.
Theirs is a story which could warm the heart of the most hardened marriage critic – one that has seen them ride waves of crippling drought, hailstorms that wiped out crops and the day-to-day strains of raising a young family.
But their love and devotion has continued to blossom with the passing years, as was evidenced when Verlie fell ill four years ago.
Forced to spend nine weeks at St Vincent’s Hospital in Toowoomba, Norm visited his wife every day without fail, only returning home to Warwick, where they moved after selling the farm in 1983, to feed their dog Mitzi.
“I still get a kick when I spot Verlie in a crowd,” he said.
“We’ve had our ups and downs, our disappointments and our tiffs,” Norm said, but mutual respect and unwavering commitment, they believe, is the key to marital bliss.
