Revisiting the weddings featured in The Advertiser and Sunday Mail — and their love stories
A good love story needs its happy ending - and these couples certainly found it. Here’s how they’ve kept the spark alive, decades on.
Lifestyle
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When Robyn and Gary Whyatt decided it was time to tie the knot almost 40 years ago, there was little fanfare about the arrangement.
After years as friends, catching up regularly through their church group, the pair’s closeness soon turned to a blossoming romance — and, before long, a wedding.
“It was just a mutual discussion that we had between the two of us. He didn’t get down on the knee and present a ring, we chose the ring together,” Mrs Whyatt said.
On the big day, there was none of the modern day hair and makeup cavalry. Mrs Whyatt quietly got ready, flanked by her mum and two sisters, and took her first steps down the aisle inside the light-filled glass walls of Nunyara chapel in Belair.
The lack of makeup turned out to be a blessing — Mrs Whyatt, now 65, chuckles as she recalls the 36 degree forecast and subsequent sauna-like conditions.
“Oh my goodness, it was pretty hot in there … it didn’t go down too well with some of the people that came down from interstate,” she said with a laugh.
Mr and Mrs Whyatt’s nuptials were well before the days of “photo dumps” of white veils filling Instagram feeds or aunties being tagged in Facebook albums stuffed with thousands of photos.
Instead, families and friends of loved-up couples would eagerly await the delivery of the Sunday Mail, flipping through the printed pulp pages to eye the first snaps of their ‘I do’ moment.
From its first publication on November 5, 1972, the Sunday Mail has featured thousands of South Australians’ special days.
How have the romanced fared? If these couples are anything to go by, it’s safe to say there’s been plenty of true love between the pages.
Here are their stories — and their secrets to romantic success.
Margie and James Carter – 1994
It was a “miracle” encounter during James Carter’s shift at the Burnside Village newsagency owned by his parents — and a sneaky dash for a cookbook — that first brought him and Margie together in 1992.
“I went in and asked for a chocolate cookbook and he didn’t have one, so he ran all the way through the shopping centre to the other newsagency called Browns, and all the way back again, to get me one,” Mrs Carter said.
“I was wearing very short shorts … his older sister came up to me and said: ‘Where’s James?’, so I told her he’d run down to get me a cookbook.”
She finishes her tale with a wry laugh: “She just looked me up and down and said: ‘I don’t think he likes you’.”
How wrong she was. Margie had just returned from travelling in America — a passion, she quickly learned, was shared by James.
“We got talking and he said, ‘Do you want to meet for a coffee and we’ll talk about travel?’, and that was the beginning of it all.”
Within six weeks, the couple shared a joint bank account and, after just 10 months, Mr Carter popped the question.
Fast forward more than 30 years from that fateful day, and that zeal for travel remains at the heart of their long and successful marriage.
The couple last year traversed through London, Scotland and Iceland together — only this time, their daughters Taylor, 26, Mads, 24, and Chelsea, 22, were by their side.
“The most important thing for us was to stay close as a family, I think that’s one of the best foundations for life,” Mrs Carter, now 54, said.
“We’re not the same people as who we were when we first got married, but that first basis that we started from is still there.
“You just have to keep doing the things together that you enjoy doing.”
Still residing in the Hazelwood Park home they first bought together, Mrs Carter said trust, passion and independence had kept the couple’s flame burning for three decades.
“We don’t need to live in each other’s pockets,” she said.
“James has things that I like doing, I have my things that I like doing. A lot of people think marriage should be about doing everything together, but we don’t think it’s necessary to spend every breathing minute together.”
Robyn and Gary Whyatt – 1986
It was a close friendship and the church community that brought Robyn and Gary Whyatt together — well, that, and a love of gardening. Almost 40 years since their matrimony, the interests behind their first spark remain as strong as their relationship.
“If we’re not in our garden we’re in somebody else’s garden, we’ve also been the church gardeners for the past 20 years,” Mrs Whyatt said.
“We’re still both on the same page with our thoughts and still very similar in what we like.”
But there’s now one thing that trumps all other hobbies: their unwavering adoration for their two grandchildren, Archie, nine months, and Reggie, 4.
“We look after them a lot now, which we really love doing. For us, it’s the highlight of our week, looking after them. You see the influence you have on your grandchildren,” Mrs Whyatt said.
“Victoria (our daughter) will often say: ‘Reggie’s come home with a really big word, where did he learn that from?’, and it really shows what they learn from us.”
Like most couples, their relationship has not been without hardship. Through health battles, they remained each other’s rocks.
That, Mrs Whyatt said, was more important than almost anything.
“It’s just about supporting one another as much as you can,” Mrs Whyatt said.
“Never forget that you’re there to help one another as best you can, cry on each other’s shoulders if you have to — and know that there’s no shame in a man crying. We’ve both done a lot of that.
“But we get on with things too. Life’s there to be enjoyed and we just make the most of what we’ve got. We’re just an average couple, with an average income and an average house — but we’re happy. Whatever life deals us, we’ll go along with it.”
Four decades down the track, each night together still ends the same way, Mrs Whyatt said.
“Every night before we go to sleep, we say that we love each other.
“It just comes naturally to us.”
Diny and Graham Schutz – 1975
It was love at first sight for Diny and Graham Schutz — and a twist of romantic fate.
The meet-cute came when Mrs Schutz, now 68, was just 18 years old and working as a nurse at Mount Pleasant Hospital. Born and raised in Mannum, her decision to move towns was actually borne of a failed dalliance.
“I had a boyfriend in Mannum that wanted to get married, but I knew I was too young … so I thought: ‘Nah, I’m going to have to leave town’,” Mrs Schutz said.
It was just three months into her new Mount Pleasant life, while working a broken shift at the hospital, that Mr Schutz arrived to visit his mother, who was one of Mrs Schutz’s patients.
When she knocked off work at 8.30pm, he was sitting outside waiting for her.
“He must’ve thought I was a bit of alright! But I wasn’t all that keen at first, he was a bit of a rough nut and had long hair,” Mrs Schutz admitted.
“But he said: ‘Do you want to go to the pub for a drink?’, and I said, ‘Yeah, alright’, and that was the beginning of our life together.”
The couple wed in 1975, aged just 19 and 20, and had their first child, Fiona, in September 1977, before their son, Hayden, was born in June 1980.
“We only had two kids because that’s all we could afford — we didn’t have a brass razoo or two cents to our name, but we got married and we didn’t have to have everything like the young ones today,” Mrs Shutz said.
“We just started off with all second-hand furniture and when we earned more money we replaced it. I was young, but I’d do it all again.”
Now with eight beloved grandchildren, Mr and Mrs Schutz will next year celebrate a joint 50th wedding anniversary and 70th birthdays — and hope their advice for love success will be passed down through the generations.
“He’s always encouraged me to be an independent person within our marriage. I’ve always been able to do what I would like to do when I’d like to do it, and he has too,” Mrs Schutz said.
“We backed each other up all the time. Even when the kids were being teenagers, if he made a decision I’d back him in even if I didn’t agree with it and vice versa, we were always a united front in front of the kids.”
Compromise, Mrs Schutz said, was the key that had kept their romantic clock ticking for almost half a century.
“We would never go to bed on an argument and never yell and scream at each other — we would argue, but we would just sit down and talk it out,” she said.
“It’s too easy these days to walk out of a marriage, people don’t want to put the effort in and work it out,”
In 2022, Mrs Schutz dropped her husband off at Mount Pleasant while she attended a doctor’s appointment. It turns out, even after almost 50 years of marriage, some things never change.
“When I went to pick him up, he was waiting at the steps of the hospital,” Mrs Schutz said.
“He came up to me and said: ‘Do you want to go to the pub for a drink?’.
“I said, ‘You old romantic you’ … 50 years later and he’s still asking me the same question.”
Sally and Scott Carpenter – 2003
It was over groceries and smallgoods that Sally and Scott Carpenter first felt their romantic spark as colleagues at a Hope Valley supermarket, but it wasn’t until the work Christmas party — with a little liquid courage behind them — that they both confessed their feelings.
Fast forward to the early 2000s and the pair had started building their life together, with construction near completion on their first home.
It was there that Mr Carpenter took his future wife into their new backyard to read a “very sentimental, two-page love letter” to her — only to discover, in the pitch black night, the electricity hadn’t been switched on yet.
Instead, he read it under the soft light of the street lamp, Mrs Carpenter said with a laugh, admitting there were a few tears as she said “yes!”.
The pair exchanged vows in November 2003 at the non-denominational church on the grounds of the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, but, with some sweet-talking, also managed to sneak into the area for some one-of-a-kind wedding photos.
“We were on stage and our bridal party acting as the ‘cheering fans’, which was a lot of fun – apparently, we were the first couple to have been able to have wedding photos taken in the arena which we thought was very cool,” Mrs Carpenter said.
“At one stage we had photos taken of the groomsmen wheeling me around in a props bin … which was all fun and laughter until they went over a bump and nearly flipped it (and me) over!”
From there, the couple was blessed with the “light of their lives” — sons Jacob, 18, and Braden, 16. With Mrs Carpenter choosing to be a stay-at-home mum until the boys reached schooling age, the couple worked their way through challenging financial battles.
But, Mrs Carpenter said, it was all worth it to cement the foundation of their family: joy.
“We missed out on quite a few luxuries over those years … but one of the most important things in our relationship is laughter and having fun – both as a couple and as a family,” Mrs Carpenter said.
In a full-circle moment, the pair are now colleagues once more, running a fresh produce wholesale company together — and the workplace spark remains the same, 20 years down the track.
Mrs Carpenter credits their longstanding love to trust, communication and, above all, remembering the connection that started it all.
“Everybody and every relationship is different, (but) when kids come along, ensure to make time for your relationship,” she said.
“Most of our time was spent with the boys when they were younger which we absolutely loved, but every year without fail we made sure to go away for two nights on our anniversary – just us – to remind ourselves of who we are as a couple, not just as Mum and Dad.”
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