They tell of a woman who never forgets where she came from, an entrepreneur who has worked hard and capitalised on every sliding doors’ moment to create her own dazzling success.

The simple solitaire diamond on her wedding finger dates to 1999 when she married Stuart Giles, then a fellow young pharmacist who popped the question in the biscuit aisle of a Coles supermarket.

He didn’t have a ring but went to a shopping mall jeweller the next day and haggled over price.

Now check out the wow-factor creation on Reid’s middle finger. It’s from 2019 when Giles “re-proposed” in an opulent villa in Venice.

The Queensland couple were in Italy as guests of French fashion house Dior and the ring, by famed jewellery designer Victoire de Castellane, immediately caught Giles’ eye.

It was from de Castellane’s 20th anniversary collection for Dior and Giles snapped it up. (Many pieces sold within a day for millions, according to Vanity Fair).

“I had no idea; it was actually hilarious,” Reid recalls as we tuck into eye fillet at Black Hide Steak & Seafood by Gambaro at The Star Brisbane.

“Stuart told me to sit in a chair in the corner of the villa, and then all these security guards are coming in and I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on?’

“Then he gets down on one knee, pulls out the ring, and the Dior people are like, ‘Stand down’, to the security guards, ‘We’re across this’.

“Of course I said yes,” Reid continues, “but I told Stuart, ‘I’m not changing these (wedding rings); they’re the original and I’m not discarding them’.”

Reid didn’t come from money, neither did Giles, but together they have made plenty of it.

From owning four pharmacies in 1998, the couple co-founded the Epic Pharmacy national network and expanded in 2012 to create Icon Group, Australia’s largest dedicated cancer care provider.

At the time of their exit from Icon in 2022, the business was valued at $2.5bn.

Reid is renowned for her couture outfits – today she is wearing Valentino – so it comes as a surprise to hear she is cutting back.

Earlier this year after selling the family home in Indooroopilly, in Brisbane’s west, she began packing to move full time to their five-bedroom apartment on the Gold Coast. (They live at Norfolk Burleigh Heads where neighbours include tech entrepreneur Bevan Slattery and wife Jodie and surgeon Reza Adib and partner Annastacia Palaszczuk).

“You accumulate so much and I do a big clear out every year (for charity Labels on the Lawn) but there was still plenty and I needed to reset and be more conscious,” she says.

“It’s not that I’ve bought nothing since January, but comparatively nothing, and I don’t miss it.”

Reid shuns beauty treatments that “cost a fortune”, such as eyelash extensions, and urges young women to “put that 200 bucks every few weeks into shares; it’s not sexy but it’s smart”.

What she will happily spend on are experiences.

The family – including daughter Sascha, 22, who is completing a master’s degree in marketing at London School of Economics, and son Sam, 20, studying sports management at Bond University – travel extensively.

And, just to step it up a notch, Reid is off to space in 2026 as one of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic’s astronauts.

She became interested in 2013 when Branson was guest speaker at a Business Chicks breakfast in Brisbane.

A year later – in one of many sliding doors’ moments that have shaped Reid’s life – she and Giles were asked by an entrepreneur friend to come to Necker Island, Branson’s private paradise in the British Virgin Islands, because another couple had pulled out.

A five-day conference called Pitch to Rich was being held, with the 28 attendees to put forward ideas in the hope of securing funding from the English tycoon.

“There was a scheduled session every day, and Richard’s very sociable so he’d be there at dinners and breakfasts as well,” Reid says.

“After a couple of days he said to us, ‘You two haven’t pitched anything’, and we said, ‘Oh, no, we really just came for the holiday’.

“He asked what we did and we told him about the business (Icon Group) and he goes, ‘Do you need funding?’ and we go, ‘No, we’re sorted, but thank you very much,” she laughs.

“We spent a bit more time with him after that because I think it was very low pressure for him; he didn’t have to worry about being hit up.”

The couple was invited back to Necker several times – in 2015 Giles bought Reid’s US$250,000 ticket to space (a Christmas surprise) and in 2018 Branson dangled another carrot.

“Richard said, ‘You know I have another island closer to you, Brett (Godfrey, Virgin Australia’s co-founder) and I have owned it but we need some new families to come in, and I’d love you and Stuart to look at it’.”

The pair booked Makepeace Island, on the Sunshine Coast, for their combined 50th birthdays in 2019 and stayed on for a week.

“It was a big investment so we wanted to try before you buy,” she says, declining to disclose the cost of their share.

Reid’s mum Marilyn will celebrate her 80th birthday there this December.

None of this would have been on Reid’s radar as a teenager at Morwell High School in rural Victoria’s Gippsland.

But in another case of sliding doors, her boss at the pharmacy where she worked part-time saw 15-year-old Reid’s aptitude and, without her parents’ knowledge, called the school and had her moved out of typing class and into chemistry.

Reid went on to study pharmacy at Monash University. Here she met Giles.

Romance wouldn’t blossom until years later when Reid’s marriage to a police officer – her school sweetheart – ended after he cheated on her.

“It was torturous at the time and I thought, ‘I have to get really serious about my career because I’m never going to have any personal happiness’, it was very dramatic,” she recalls.

“I was 27 and all my friends were getting married and I thought, ‘I’ve got no one to go on holidays with, what will I do?’, so I went to a pharmacy conference.”

There, in Fiji in 1997, she met some Australians looking to do an aged care pharmacy start-up and joined them full time the following year.

Re-enter Giles, who was working in the hospital pharmacy space.

They bumped into each other at a friend’s party in Melbourne and he proposed six weeks later.

It was over the phone at 4am after a buck’s party. A few more failed attempts followed before Giles struck gold beside the chocolate biscuits in Coles, Brandon Park.

Reid was taking him to meet her father – Wally, who’d taken a redundancy from the State Electricity Commission and embarked on cattle farming – and she suggested Giles not mention he had “moved himself in”.

“I said to Stuart, ‘It’s not like we’re engaged’, and he said, ‘How many times do I have to ask?’, and I’m like, ‘Are you actually proposing in a supermarket?’ and he said, ‘Yes, make it snappy’.”

The newlyweds moved to Brisbane in 1999 because two of their four pharmacies were in Queensland.

“It probably sounds weird but it was lovely that we didn’t know anyone,” Reid says.

“It removed the social pressure, constantly feeling bad about saying no to going out with friends, so we could just work, day and night.”

For all her success, there is a deep sadness.

Reid is being sued for millions by the current owners of Icon Group, Swedish private equity group EQT, over a dispute in relation to the pharmacies she and Giles still own.

She tells me about the stoush but publicly declines to say more than “it doesn’t have to be this way, we’ve repeated numerous times our willingness to settle”.

“Now, references to the business you spent 20-plus years of your life building literally make you feel sick in the stomach.

“It is not optimal for steak digestion,” she adds, trying to lighten the mood.

Made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2019 for her service to healthcare delivery and philanthropy, Reid has plenty on the go.

She is chair of AUCloud, a sovereign provider of cloud solutions, and a director of the family’s investment company Arc31 and philanthropic SpArc Foundation.

She is also a director of the Brisbane Lions after being persuaded by former coach Leigh Matthews to step up.

In 2015 Reid had been talking to Jamie Charman, now a buyer’s agent but then in business development at the AFL club, about how to engage better with its female fan base.

The pair met through Reid’s love of fashion – Charman’s wife Nicky runs Calexico boutique in James Street.

Charman went back to the club and they decided to set up Women of the Pride. Reid was asked to speak at the inaugural lunch.

“One of the things I was talking about was memberships across the AFL is close to 50 per cent female, and if you take into account the role women play in determining household discretionary spending, then women’s input is crucial,” Reid says.

“On the flip side, club boards are mostly male – that’s not representative of your market and that’s bad business.”

A few weeks later Matthews invited her to join the board.

“I said, ‘Well, Stuart’s the footy head in the family, not me’, and he said, ‘I’m not asking you to be the coach’.

“And this is one of the things I love about Leigh, he’s very direct. l said, ‘I don’t think I’ve got the time’, and he goes, ‘Well, that’d be right, you call us out on stage, you’re offered the chance to be part of the solution, and you’re too busy?’, and I said, ‘All right, when you put it that way’.”

Reid says part of the appeal was to help the club rebuild – “it’s always more rewarding to build something than it is to maintain something” – and this year’s AFL Grand Final win was a brilliant prize, not only for the players but the dozens of people doing “very unglamorous work” behind the scenes.

With all Reid has accomplished and what’s to come – a certain trip to space – I wonder about a bucket list.

“Good question,” Reid says. “Stuart and I joke about the places Dior has ruined for us, because they always create such an incredible experience.”

Think fashion shows and star-studded hospitality at the ancient Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, in the 16th century El Badi palace in Morocco, and in the gardens of Drummond Castle in Scotland – not to forget that Venice villa and surprise “reproposal”.

“If we go back under our own steam, no one is going to be shutting palaces for us,” she laughs.

“But honestly, one of my favourite things to do is walking barefoot on the beach at Burleigh with Stuart and our dog George, the most spoiled toy poodle on the planet.”