Couple who helped each other file their divorce papers remarried at age 26

They look like any other bride and groom, but Vicky and Wal’s wedding photo hides an unusual truth.

They look like any other bride and groom, but Vicky and Wal’s wedding photo hides an unusual truth.

Despite being just 26 and 27 on their big day, they’d already been married, and divorced, before.

Now, Vicky and Wal are featuring on Married Young, a new episode of Insight premiering Tuesday 12 on SBS, showcasing the psychology of why people marry young.

In 2023, the average age for marriage is 31 for men and 29 for women. Only 7 per cent of marriages in Australia currently involve a man under 25, and 13 per cent involve a woman under 25. The most recent ABS data show that 11 per cent of marriages in Australia were couples under the age of 25.

Married at 22

A year after meeting her first husband at a pub and falling “madly in love,” Vicky found herself at 23, a single mother of a little baby.

“I did want to get married. I didn’t think I would get married that early, but I thought it was love,” she told news.com.au.

“There was no proposal. There was just the whirlwind of ‘let’s get engaged’”.

Six weeks after meeting her ex-husband at the pub, Vicky, now 55, was pregnant, and a rushed wedding soon followed.

“I had the big white wedding of the 90s, the beautiful dress, the expensive invitation all that sort of stuff,” she said.

“My mum, as a single mother, had some concerns, but I wanted to get married and his parents funded a lot of the wedding.”

According to Vicky, the marriage soon turned “quite volatile”, and five months after tying the knot, they were separated.

Vicky married for the first time at 22, while Wal married at 23. The pair, seen here on their own wedding day, started dating after their marriages fell apart.

‘First real love’

Meanwhile, Wal, now 56, was coming off the back of his teenage years spent mostly “unlucky in love” and quickly married “his first real love” at 23.

“I never knew my grandparents so I’ve always been somebody who wanted to start a family early, so they can maybe get to know their grandparents,” he told news.com.au.

“Now my grandchildren have gotten to meet their great grandparents.

“The relationship (with my first wife) soured because we had nothing in common – my wife left and took the child with her.

“My mum was quite old-fashioned, and I knew she’d rather we be married.”

Vicky, who was 23 at the time and Wal, who was 24, have contrasting recollections of being young, single parents.

For Vicky, there was an element of shame, exclusion and assumptions.

“It was very hard, and I felt very stigmatised as a single mum on a single mum pension,” she said.

She said it was always a difficult conversation, explaining why she left her marriage – one she’d do her best to avoid.

Wal, on the other hand, said there was a lot more “understanding” for his situation.

A new love story

Vicky and Wal grew up three doors down from one another in rural North East Victoria.

“I was the snotty-nosed kid up the other end of the street,” Vicky laughed,

The pair, who since kids had been family friends, would eventually become close, confiding in each other about their shared struggles separating and having children young.

Over 18 months they moved in together and even filed their divorces together.

In 1996, at ages 26 and 27, they were married by a tow-truck driver from Hotham who, in one fell swoop, wed them, christened their children, and blessed the house they’d just built together.

Vicky’s first marriage resulted in her becoming a single mother at 23, followed by a rushed wedding.

They haven’t looked back, nor would they take a mulligan.

“We’re more spontaneous than we’ve ever been. We don’t have to worry about anyone or anything, whereas back then, you had responsibility,” Vicky said.

“We quickly realised because you had the kids young, we’re going to be young when we get to the other end of it, when the kids all leave home.”

“So we’ve planned on doing all of the travelling and things you might have done in your 20s, now in our 50s.”

Vicky said that despite a smaller age gap between them and their three shared children in their late 20s and early 30s, their children “still perceive us as old”.

”Our daughter said “some old bloke came in”, and I was like, “How old?” – She said “about your age,” Wal added jokingly.

For anyone considering marrying young, the pair suggests, “whoever you get with, make sure they’re your friend”.

Wal, driven by a desire for family, married young, but his first marriage ended due to lack of common interests.

Aussies marrying older

Belinda Hewitt, Professor In Sociology from the University of Melbourne’s, told news.com.au. there was good reason Aussies were marrying older.

“Post-World War Two, the economic boom with high employment and protected male breadwinner wages made it easy for people to marry young, establish themselves, buy a house and do everything they needed to do to support a family,” she said.

“I think that’s changed quite dramatically – young people these days aren’t earning anywhere near the equivalent living wage that their parents and their grandparents were earning.

“The idea is that being married and having a family is very much tied with the idea of being financially secure.”

Wal, driven by a desire for family, married young, but his first marriage ended due to lack of common interests.

Prof Hewitt said an attitudinal shift and increasingly secular Australia may also be a cause.

“Our parents and grandparents getting married young was actually a brief moment in history (because) it was the hay day of the male breadwinner, female homemaker type household arrangement,” she said.

“Prior to that, say, the 20s and 30s, the average age of marriage was actually higher.

“Our marriage rates are lower than they have been, but they’re not that dissimilar than they were in the 20s and 30s.”

The proportion of people getting married in churches has declined to 20-30 per cent from almost 90 per cent, according to Prof Hewitt, another probable cause for the recent move away from marrying young.

Most religions encourage people to get married, get married young and have children – but Australia is one of the most secular societies in the world.

They grew up as family friends and later married at 26 and 27 with the support of their shared struggles.

Divorce rates in Australia have been stable since the 2000s, but Prof expects more precise data yet to emerge from the Covid-19 crisis to present a potential spike in separation.

She said such events, which for many, induce financial hardship, like the Global financial crisis, align with spikes in divorce.

In celebrity circles, Kim Kardashian, Olivia Wilde, Justin Beiber and Hailey Bieber have been making headlines, perhaps giving us a falsely perceived aggregate, for decades – albeit with questionable results.

The marriage breakdown of Sophie Turner and her husband US singer Joe Jonas has dominated headlines in recent days. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP)

Hailey and Justin Bieber. (Photo by Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

Indeed, in the week just gone, the entertainment world has been flat out digesting the breakdown of the high-profile marriage of Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner and Jonas Brother Joe Jonas, who tied the knot in 2019 when Turner was just 23.

But there are some outliers in the broader community, too.

“People do look to media to establish what their ideal relationship looks like, and there’s possibly something indirectly coming from that. Still, it depends on how much they relate to celebrities,” Prof Hewitt said.

“Ultimately, people make their own decisions.”